


Les Fleurs du mal

by CaptainSwank



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Breathplay, Bullying, Character Death, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Forced Feminization, Gaslighting, Humiliation, Implied Mpreg, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Physical Abuse, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural Illnesses, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27239692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainSwank/pseuds/CaptainSwank
Summary: Jon makes a deal at the end of the world, and Jonah has plans for his prize.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 202
Kudos: 189





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leitnerpiper69](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leitnerpiper69/gifts).



> [Now with wonderful art by Cakes!!](https://twitter.com/Cakesmarts/status/1347702699664445440?s=20)
> 
> [Now with EVEN MORE wonderful art by Cakes!!!!](https://twitter.com/Cakesmarts/status/1367334772461084672?s=20)

When the base of the great tower finally comes into view, it becomes clear that there’s someone standing in front of it. They can see Jonah’s coat and his hair being whipped up by the cold winds of his kingdom, and Martin tries his best to sound brave.

“Well… small blessings? At least he’s not going to make us walk up all those stairs before we kill him.” A nervous little laugh pushes its way past the gaps in his armour. Jon squeezes his hand and doesn’t mention the aura of  _ excitement  _ that he feels emanating from the man in front of the tower. Martin squeezes back and they approach Jonah Magnus in silence.

“Hello, Jon.” Jon feels like he’s being burned and cut and burrowed into at those words, and he recoils slightly. Martin steps in front of him protectively. “Martin,” Jonah continues, acknowledging him with a small nod and an awful smile. “Punctual as always.”

“Fuck off,” Martin tells him. His fury overwhelms his fear.

“None of that, now,” Jonah replies, and Jon has to step up in front of Martin in case he has to try and hold him back. “Now that you’re here, we can begin.” 

“We don’t need an invitation to end you,” Martin says darkly. “Do we, Jon?” But when he turns to Jon for confirmation, he sees the way in which he’s looking at Jonah. And he sees the way Jonah looks back at Jon. “Jon?” he asks, the steel in his voice now softened.

“You still haven’t told him, I see,” Jonah says, as if he can’t reach into their minds and own their thoughts. As if everything they’ll ever do and everything they’ve ever done was for his own personal enjoyment.

“What? Again? Jon, this is  _ not  _ the time to be secretive!” Martin hisses. Martin still trusts him, Jon can feel it, but he can also feel that Martin’s on a mental razor’s edge and is about to start catastrophizing. He’s afraid they’re about to lose control of the situation; that Jon’s about to slip away from him.

“Martin, please, don’t worry.” Jon tries to keep the waver from his voice. Tries to keep it together in front of their mortal enemy, for Martin. But Jonah’s smile is widening and Martin’s hands are shaking.

“I  _ am  _ worried, Jon. I’m very worried. This… this is me worrying! Why don’t you tell m- what haven’t you told me?”

“I... I can’t end him with this power. The Eye won’t destroy the thing it loves. But… I have a plan, Martin,” Jon says, steadying himself because he believes in it. “I have a… we have an agreement.”

“You  _ what _ ?” Martin says, and his voice starts to climb in volume and in pitch. “Have you been… have you been  _ communicating  _ with him? In  _ secret _ ?” 

“I-I… I wasn’t sure that you’d agree to it. I thought it would be best if I--” 

“Please, Jon, just tell me. What’s happening? What’s going on?” Jon turns his back on Jonah as if he could physically block out his long, low chuckle, and he takes Martin’s hands firmly in his own.

“Martin, it’s the only way that I can keep everyone safe. It’s the only way I can save them.”

“Jon…?”

“Martin, listen to me, he won’t harm you --  _ any _ of you -- and he’ll let you go.” Martin sucks in a long slow breath.

“And what does he get in return, Jon?” Jon can’t meet Martin’s eyes.

“Me.” Martin pulls his hands away from Jon’s. 

“ _ What? _ No! Don’t be-- don’t be  _ stupid _ ! You can keep me safe by staying  _ with _ me!” Jon meets Martin’s gaze again and tries to make him see, tries to make him believe without words that they’ve executed plans much like this one before. The stakes might be higher and the bait might be different, but it’s Jon’s turn to put himself in the line of fire again.

“Please, Martin, it’s the only way--” Jon reaches out to take Martin’s face in his hands. Martin can’t help it and he leans into Jon’s palm for a moment before pulling away.

“ _ No _ , Jon, you  _ can’t _ , I won’t-- I don’t  _ want _ this! How can you even be sure that he’s telling the truth?”

“Am I not a man of my word?” Jonah’s smooth tone shatters the horrible spell that they’d fallen under. “Have I ever lied to you?” he asks.

“Shut  _ up! _ ” Martin tries to block out Jonah’s words too, and he angles his body forward to lean his forehead against Jon’s. “No, Jon,  _ please _ , we’ll figure something out, we'll figure something out together--”

“Yes, Martin, you’ll figure it out. When you meet back up with the others--”

“Jon, please don’t do this,” he whispers. “I don’t want to without you.” 

“Please trust me. I have to,” Jon tells him, and he reaches up to push Martin’s fringe away from his eyes. 

“Of course I trust you, Jon, but--” 

“Martin, you know… you know I’ll always be yours, no matter what happens.” Martin doesn’t want to let him go, but Jon can feel him understanding that he can’t hold on. 

“I know, Jon.” Martin takes a wet and shuddering breath. “I know.” Jon begins to fold this warm and bright thing away. He places it deep inside himself because he knows he’ll need it to face whatever’s to come. To seal it all he reaches up to pull Martin down, and he lets his mouth rest soft against Martin’s. It’s probably Martin’s angry tears that wet their lips, not his own, and he kisses them away. Their clothes brush together softly when Martin puts his strong arms around him, and he holds Jon like it’s the last time.

“Well, now that that’s all settled,” Jonah says, as if their meeting’s reached its conclusion. “Jon?” They let each other go, and Jon turns to face the man who ended the world. 

“Right,” Jon says, and he tries to pull determination from Martin’s lingering warmth. 

“Just one, ah, minor detail.” Jonah’s words stop Jon where he stands. He was sure that they had covered all the particulars of their arrangement in the private correspondence once conducted within Jon’s mind. “And how do I know that I can trust  _ you _ ?” 

Jon scoffs. “You haven’t prepared a contract?” he asks drily. “To be signed in blood, perhaps?” He looks up at the tower before him and he thinks back to when Elias Bouchard first welcomed him into the Institute.

“Please, Jon. I think we’re past that now,” Jonah replies. He pulls a tiny, elegant box from his pocket and when the knowledge of what’s inside is withheld from Jon, it hurts. Martin must have figured it out without the aid of an evil god, and he makes a high and agonized sound.

“ _ No _ ,” Martin says, when Jonah opens the box to display the simple ring inside. 

“Oh come now, it’s just a symbol,” Jonah says, as if he’s unaware of the cruelty of the act. “A symbol of our promise.” Jonah holds out his hand to Jon while he looks into Martin's eyes. The implicit threat forces Jon to put his shaking hand in Jonah’s. 

“ _ Jon! _ ” Martin calls out, as Jonah moves to slide the ring onto Jon’s finger. Jon looks into Jonah’s eyes with all the loathing that carried him here.

“You know you’ll only have my…” Jon swallows. “You know you won’t ever truly have my mind,” he finishes, because he needs to believe it.

“Or your heart?” Jonah asks, and he laughs. “We’ll see.” Jonah doesn’t say anything about his body, but his gaze pierces Jon when he pushes the ring onto him. As it slips down the length of his finger, Jon feels electric, like a current’s running through him. When the ring’s finally in place, Jon’s vision flashes bright and green and he feels his hair blow black as if he was buffeted by a hot blast of wind. When everything settles, he stares down at the band around his finger. He still can’t access Jonah’s thoughts, so he tests a hypothesis and he tries to pull the ring off. 

It doesn’t budge.

Before he can turn to look at Martin, Jonah grabs him lightly by the chin. He leans down and he leaves the softest of kisses against Jon’s lips, where Martin’s had only just lingered. It tingles slightly, and Jon staggers back, wiping his face with his fingers.

“Well! I believe that everything’s in order,” Jonah says evenly. He looks at the two of them and he smiles. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.” 

“Jon!” Martin cries out. “I’ll be back for you. I will!”

“I know,” Jon says, smiling sadly. “I know.”

And Jonah takes Jon’s hand, the one with his ring upon it, and he turns to lead him back towards the tower. When they arrive at the entrance, Jonah leans over to whisper in Jon’s ear:

“ _ How wonderful to have my Archivist back. _ ” 

Jon turns and looks back at his love one last time before the doors shut softly behind him. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon finds himself the target of Jonah’s considerable focus.

Jonah looks him up and down and raises one unimpressed eyebrow. Jon clenches his fists and glares up at him, defiant. 

“Disappointed by the spoils of your victory?” Jon sneers. It takes all of his self-control not to flinch away from Jonah’s gaze as he circles Jon like a predator. “I don’t  _ have _ to be here.”

“Oh, no, Jon. Nothing of the sort,” Jonah tells him, once he completes his orbit. But he wrinkles his nose very slightly. “But I must say, your journey hasn’t left you at your freshest.”

“Well, you’ll have to excuse me for not stopping for a  _ bubble bath  _ while I clawed my way through your hideous  _ nightmare realm _ .”

“Oh, absolutely. I absolutely will. In fact, that’s quite an idea. I’ll draw one for you.”

“Elias--”

“Ah, ah…”

“ _ Jonah _ . I can… I can  _ bathe  _ myself,” Jon says, and he feels himself redden when he looks away.

“Irrelevant,” Jonah says dismissively, and Jon is suddenly struck by the implications of that sentiment. From now on whatever he can do, whatever he wants to do-- those things are immaterial. He doesn’t want to begin to think about the things that he  _ can' _ t do. Or won’t do. He closes his eyes and drops his head and takes a deep breath, and when he steels himself he follows Jonah up the huge and elegant staircase.

The bathroom is unnecessarily massive. Jon considers the fact that Jonah doesn’t have anyone to impress, or anyone for whom he could flaunt the ostentatious power that comes of owning the world. He must genuinely revel in excess, then, if he’s created this space just for himself. The idea that Jonah may have designed the place with Jon in mind doesn’t bear thinking about. Because as he looks about the room he sees his own skinny body repeated infinitely before him: all the walls are mirrored. 

Well, all except a part of one. Underneath an enormous window that looks out over Jonah’s domain, there sits a spacious clawfoot bathtub. Its golden taps are pristine and sparkling, and Jonah moves forward to turn them on. Jon subconsciously presses himself against the bathroom door. It’s strange to see Jonah on the ground like that, as he kneels beside the bathtub with his rolled-up sleeves. After it runs for a while, he dips his hand in to test the water and, satisfied, he turns to Jon.

“Well?” he says, looking at Jon with an intensity unique to his eyes.

“What?” Jon says obstinately, knowing full well that he’s not expected to bathe while fully clothed. 

“Strip,” Jonah commands, and Jon resents himself for making Jonah say it. Wasn’t the humiliation of the whole situation punishment enough? Did he really have to invite Jonah to inflict more suffering upon his soul? 

Jon resolves to make the whole procedure as unsatisfying as possible for Jonah, but he knows immediately that he will fail. Despair is beginning to creep into the cracks in his mind, because it’s becoming increasingly clear to him that no matter what he does, it provides some measure of pleasure for Jonah. If Jon resists, it makes him push harder. And if he acquiesces, Jonah feels triumphant.

And so as stiff and artless as Jon is in the removal of his clothes, Jonah seems to revel in his vulnerability. He’s openly leering at Jon when he drops his shirt to the tiles. Jon follows Jonah’s hungry gaze and he knows without Knowing that Jonah is drinking in all of the marks on his exposed torso. It’s like Jon can feel his fingers on his every scar. But it’s only his eyes.

Jon steps out of his shoes and socks slowly, as if time were of any relevance here. But it’s not, and eventually he has to unbutton his trousers. He drops them and steps out of them too, leaving him nearly naked in front of Jonah. He feels a shiver run through him at the thought of his inevitable total exposure, and at Jonah’s eyes on his belly and his thighs. And suddenly he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter if Jonah mocks him or hurts him for it; he wraps his arms around his thin chest and he takes whatever comfort he can in the act.

Jonah turns the water off and beckons Jon forward with a slight inclination of his head. Jon takes a slow and shuddering breath but he crosses the room to him, his bare feet cold on the tile. He stands before his captor and his owner, looking down at him on his knees, and he summons the nerve to drop his arms by his sides. Jonah raises his hands and rests them warm against the sides of Jon’s legs. He runs them slow up his thighs and hooks his fingers into the waistband of Jon’s briefs. Jon hears himself make a small and distressed sound, but of course that doesn’t stop Jonah. He just holds Jon’s gaze and he slowly, slowly pulls them down.

Jon looks at the tense surface of the water, and the way that it glistens in the cold light of the room. It’s better than looking at his reflection in any of the mirrors on all of the walls, or at how Jonah must be looking at him where he’s soft and vulnerable, tender and exposed. 

He’ll get in the bath, now, so that Jonah will stop looking at him there.

It’s the perfect temperature, and the water envelops him warm and gentle. But it does nothing to thaw the ice in Jon’s bones, and he shudders a little when he settles back against the cool side of the tub. 

“Mm, there we are,” Jonah says indulgently. “That’s not so bad, is it?” Jon doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He just glowers at Jonah with as much pure loathing as he can, and Jonah responds with one of his thin-lipped little smiles. 

The horrifying intimacy of the act overwhelms him immediately. He’s never permitted anyone to take care of him in such a way in all his adult life, if the phrase could even be applied here. To have the man who mangled and manipulated his body and his mind caress him so is almost unbearable. But he’s bound to that man now, so he sits stiffly in the tub while Jonah scoops up handfuls of warm and perfumed water and lets it trickle gently down his back.

Jonah soaps his shoulders, occasionally stopping to press his thumbs into the stiff tightness of Jon’s muscles. Jon wonders that if he closes his eyes, he can imagine that it’s someone else’s hands that are cleaning the filth of Jonah’s apocalypse off of him. But he can’t, because Jonah won’t let him. 

“Come, Jon, everyone likes a massage,” Jonas says chidingly. Jon sighs. The warm hands with those long fingers clearly belong to Jonah. And that voice could only be his. 

“Just get on with it,” Jon mutters, and he knows that his reticence will only spur Jonah further on. He raises Jon’s limp arms and washes them thoroughly, and he takes special care with Jon’s nails. And just as Jon knew he would, when Jonah reaches his damaged chest he pauses to put down the washcloth. Jon watches his eyes widen ever so slightly, his lips barely parted, and he hears his breath quicken too. Very slowly, Jonah reaches out to Jon and runs his fingertips over the mark on Jon’s shoulder. The touch is feather-light and it makes Jon shiver despite the humidity in the room.

After he strokes the scar from one end to the other, his fingers continue their journey down Jon’s side. They follow the water droplets running down every visible rib, and back up again. He draws his thumb over Jon’s pockmarked chest, and as it moves from wormhole to wormhole it catches a nipple. Jon hisses and flinches back but Jonah hushes him absently, unthinkingly as his fingers finally land on Jon’s neck. He tilts Jon’s head back to expose the spot where Daisy tore him open and he touches Jon there too. Jon can’t stand it anymore, and he breaks.

“Jonah--” 

“Hm?” Jonah says quietly. The look on his face is awful and it disturbs Jon to the extreme. “Ah. Yes.” 

He seems to return to himself somewhat, and he gathers the washcloth again. He arranges himself so that he can easily lift Jon’s ankle from the tub to see to his feet and his calves. Jon’s beginning to wish he’d let Jonah linger longer with his scars because he knows what’s coming next.

But Jonah allows him a brief respite from that violation, or he leaves Jon to contemplate its inevitability while he waits for it to happen. Instead he puts a hand on Jon’s forehead to shield his eyes, and he picks up a small golden vessel to pour some water over Jon’s head. When Jonah lathers it the smell should be sweet and pleasant, but it turns Jon’s stomach. He swallows hard and Jonah puts his hands in Jon’s hair. 

Jonah’s blunt fingernails scratch lightly across his scalp, and Jon feels queasy at the pleasurable sensation of this, too. It sends a frisson of feeling down his spine, and he wishes it was the water cooling on his skin that made him shiver. But he can’t flee the truth any longer here; there’s no point, and even if there were, Jonah could demolish any obfuscation with a jaunt into his mind. 

“Your hair’s getting long,” Jonah says. He strokes his fingers down the strands that fall against Jon’s neck. He hadn’t had much of a chance to keep it short and tidy and professional. He was too concerned with delaying the end of the world. And causing it.

“Yes, it wants cutting,” Jon admits, and he sighs.

“No, I don’t think so,” Jonah replies. “I quite like it. It’s very…” Jonah curls an errant strand of hair around one finger. “...Pretty,” he says. Jon snorts derisively. 

“ _ Pretty  _ isn’t exactly how I’d like to look.”

“It’s how I’d like you to look,” Jonah says quietly, as he continues to run Jon’s damp hair through his fingers.

“Excuse me?” Jon feels his guts clench like he’s been poisoned. 

“You’ll be pretty for me, Jon,” says Jonah, and he begins to rinse Jon’s hair. 

Jon considers the implications of that assertion as the water runs down his back. Jonah’s not letting him wander freely into his mind right now to see exactly what it is that he means. And so it almost takes him by surprise when he feels Jonah’s washcloth on the insides of his thighs. 

“ _ Please _ ,” Jon says, and he hates the sound of his voice when he says it. 

“This might be a perfect opportunity for a little object lesson in what your, ah,  _ privileges _ are, now that you’re mine,” Jonah tells him. Jonah doesn’t patiently explain to him exactly what his place is now, here in the tower. He just pushes the washcloth higher, up between Jon’s legs. 

Jon has nowhere to go, backed up as he already is against the side of the tub. He’s trapped there physically, and he doesn’t even know what to do with his eyes. If he looks about the room, from every angle he sees the colour in his cheeks and on his chest and the tips of his ears. If he closes his eyes, there’s nothing to distract him from the feeling of Jonah cleaning him slowly and carefully. And if he looks up, it’s into Jonah’s eyes and the sheer obvious delight that he finds there. Jon twitches and squirms but he takes it. And he finds that he’s settled on Jonah’s eyes. 

Jonah takes his time but soon he’s dragging the cloth up Jon’s hip and his side and out of the water. Jon releases the breath he’d been holding, and he’s ready for Jonah to make some comment about clinging unnecessarily to the former needs of a body that’s no longer human. But Jon’s let the tension drop from his shoulders prematurely, because now Jonah’s leaning forward and reaching around Jon’s body. Jonah’s clearly instructed him not to beg, but holding back the plea makes him whimper. 

“Very good, Jon,” Jonah tells him, like he’s learning. He wonders if it’s worth it, and what will happen when he invokes this man’s wrath. He leaves the latter a mystery for now as Jonah leans so close into him that his crisp white shirt brushes lightly against Jon’s shoulder. Jon watches the transferred wetness spread as Jonah reaches down behind him. He makes that high pitched and hurting sound again before Jonah’s done.

Jonah must have stopped and put the washcloth down and leaned back at some point. Jon raises his head from where he’d dropped it down against his chest in defeat. 

“You’ve been very accommodating, Jon,” Jonah says as he stands and reaches out an elegant hand. Jon’s been scrubbed clean of the will to fight and he watches it swirl down the drain with the bathwater. He puts his hand in Jonah’s and allows himself to be helped out of the tub. He’s left to wrap his arms around his middle again, damp and shivering, as Jonah’s shoes click against the marble floor when he crosses the room. When he comes back he wraps Jon in a decadent bathrobe. Jon doesn’t want to see how it’s monogrammed, so he doesn’t look down.

While Jon holds the robe around himself Jonah steps up into his space and gently starts to dry Jon’s hair. This close to Jonah’s face there’s too much to process. There’s something disgusting and soft behind his eyes and in the crease of his brow, but his lips curl cruelly. Jon stands there, dripping, as he lets Jonah manipulate his body to better dry him off. He tries to find solace in the fact that at least this little humiliation is nearing its end. 

When Jonah finally drops the towel Jon starts to move back towards the bathroom door. But Jonah takes him by both shoulders and gently pushes him down to sit on the edge of the tub. Clearly they’re not as close to the end as he had hoped. Jonah reaches down to retrieve a pretty bottle and when what’s about to happen to him registers with Jon, he really starts to shake.

It’s true panic that he experiences when he thinks of Jonah rubbing the cream into his skin-- he can’t help it. His eyes widen and his fingers clench and unclench where they’re resting on the side of the tub, and something in his chest throbs and burns.

“Oh yes, it would be a touch troubling for you, wouldn’t it?” Jonah remarks casually, as he considers the moisturizer. He says it as if he hadn’t abandoned Jon for a month while every inch of him was felt up and fondled and  _ caressed  _ by horrible plastic hands. 

“ _ Jonah _ ,” Jon says as he stands, because he can’t go through that again, not here, not like this, not at his hands. But Jon doesn’t even get as far as threats, let alone fighting and clawing his way past Jonah and out of his terrible tower, because Jonah shows him  _ exactly  _ what he’ll have done to him if Jon fails to fulfil his side of their bargain. 

Jon sits back down on the side of the tub. This won’t be so bad.

Jonah returns to his knees in front of Jon and puts a little cream into the palm of one hand. As he did in the bath, he lifts one of Jon’s ankles and he slowly rubs it into Jon’s calf. Jonah even takes a moment with his foot, and he pushes his thumbs into its arch. It makes Jon gasp. 

Soon enough his hands travel higher up Jon’s legs, and this time he tries to push his thighs together. But Jonah prises them apart easily, and he makes sure that Jon’s skin is soft in all the places that the bathrobe hides. 

He goes on like that, pushing the robe off one shoulder to rub cream into the scar there, and pulling Jon’s thin arms out one at a time to moisturize them. He takes Jon’s twisted hand in his own for a moment, and he digs his thumb into Jon’s palm too, in a way that feels incredible. Jonah looks into Jon’s eyes while he does it, and Jon knows that he sees them unfocus while his eyelids flutter.

Jon tries to decide what’s worse: what Nikola had done to him then, or what Jonah’s doing to him now. There was something cold and impersonal about the Stranger’s softening of his skin, and that was unnerving in its own way. But Jonah taking his time with him, treating him gently and with care like this is violating in ways that transcend the physical. Jon’s whole body feels hot and sensitized, and the feeling intensifies as Jonah massages his sides and his chest. Just as Jon hears the little noises that emerge shyly from the back of his own throat, Jonah closes Jon’s robe around him. 

“Almost done,” he says. “I’m glad to see you’re finally starting to enjoy yourself.” 

Jon’s lip curls in disgust, but his mind glows hot with fear. If he can’t school his body’s reactions to Jonah’s gentle manipulations, then he doesn’t want to think about how he’ll survive whatever the man is planning next.

Jonah stands now, and he smiles benignly down at Jon where he sits. He brings his hands up to hold Jon’s face between them, and he runs his fingers and the backs of his hands over Jon’s cheeks. His stubble rasps against those hands, and Jon inhales deeply. He waits for Jonah to go and retrieve a shaving kit and a little basin of water, which he brings back and places beside them on the tile.

He watches as Jonah pours a little oil into his palms and rubs them together slowly. He rubs it into Jon’s cheeks next, and does the same with the shaving cream. It’s humiliating, sitting here docile and obedient for him, though his eyes widen as Jonah unfolds a glistening straight razor. 

Jon can’t tear his eyes from it when Jonah raises it to his face. He stops breathing again when Jonah puts one hand in his damp hair and pulls his head back. The razor goes to the mark on his throat. Jon closes his eyes. But there’s no cut or nick or pain or blood, just the feel of the sharp razor moving in short strokes up his throat. 

When Jonah finishes with his neck, he puts his fingers on Jon’s chin and turns his face this way and that, consideringly. He pulls Jon’s skin taut, and slow and gentle he runs the blade down Jon’s face. Every time he goes to rinse the razor Jon takes a short little breath. Every time Jonah takes a stroke, Jon holds it in.

Jon’s gasps are the only sounds in the quiet room as Jonah concentrates on his task. Jon doesn’t wish to disturb him and he certainly can’t speak. But soon enough the job is done and Jonah is softly patting his face with a sweet-scented balm. Jon starts to feel dizzy with the heat in the room and the smells in the air and the proximity of Jonah Magnus. 

“Nice and smooth,” Jonah tells him, and he closes the distance between them to press his shaven cheek against Jon’s. Jon jumps back, not expecting the touch, and Jonah lets him go to tidy up. When he’s finished, this time he coaxes Jon up with an arm around his waist. He almost slips on the tile, and Jonah holds him tighter. The scent of what Jonah’s pampered him with mixes with the man’s cologne, and it makes Jon’s head swim even more. 

When they reach the pile of his clothes on the floor, Jon bends to retrieve them. Jonah stays his hand. 

“We’ll burn these,” he says dismissively. A hurt sound catches in Jon’s throat.

He knows that they’re just clothes, but it’s almost as if a part of himself is being wrenched from the confines of his body; surgically removed. It couldn’t possibly be any clearer to him that from now on he’ll wear what Jonah wants him to wear, look how Jonah wishes him to look, and smell and talk and think the way the man wants. 

Jon takes a deep shuddering breath, and he lets Jonah lead him through the washroom door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand now you have an idea of where this is going.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jonah continues to make Jon perfect.

_ I’ll leave it to you, then, _ is what Jonah tells him before shutting the door gently behind him. If Jon closes his eyes, it’s almost as if he’s back in his office at the Institute, and Elias had just left him with a decision about something bureaucratic and inconsequential. But now he has an Eye that never closes, though since he’s walked through Jonah’s doors it seems as if it’s starting to grow myopic. But even if he  _ could  _ shut it, or tear it from himself, the sight in front of him is plain enough to his own more human senses.

Jonah had been kind enough to lay out something for him to wear. The various pieces of his intended ensemble are spread across the massive bed that seems to Jon to dominate the room. He scrubs his hands over his face, and pushes the heels of his palms against his eyes. He takes a long, slow breath. He supposes he might as well get it over with.

He approaches the bed slowly as if he could put off the inevitable, and he lifts each delicate garment one after the other. Their respective intended purposes would be clear even to someone unable to reach a hand into all the world’s knowledge to draw from it what’s needed. He supposes he shouldn’t keep Jonah waiting; the man probably enjoys the anticipation. Jon shudders at the reminder that Jonah seems to be able to take pleasure in every choice Jon makes. How he makes it feel as if Jon barely has a choice at all.

And he wonders what’s more humiliating, as he slides the robe off his shoulders and drops it to the floor. Jonah’s hands on him again, pushing and pulling him into these clothes he’s chosen for him, or this: the knowledge that he’s doing it to himself, willingly draping himself in what’s before him. He shivers in his nakedness in the cool room, and without being forced by Jonah’s hands, or compelled to by his mind, he picks up the white cotton chemise and pulls it over his head.

It’s immediately awkward, and it feels all wrong. He’s never at any point in his life been what you might call sartorially daring, but even if he’d ever been inclined to take risks with his wardrobe, the fact that Jonah’s clearly selected all of this for his own personal pleasure compounds the unpleasantness of the experience. He grabs what’s meant to go underneath and closes his eyes when he slides them up his thighs. They’re thin and delicate and he’s not entirely sure that they’ll… cover everything that they need to. Now Jon really feels sick.

There’s much more that’s left on the bed to go under the dress that Jonah’s chosen. But Jon thinks that what's been done to him thus far has been indignity enough, and so he grabs the deep crimson gown and pulls it on. It feels wrong, too, hanging limply on his skinny frame. It’s clear he lacks the curves to fill it out. He can’t imagine that Jonah will be really pleased with the overall effect. But he slips on the low heels and tries to muster as much wobbly, uncomfortable dignity as he is able as he heads back to the door. Jonah is there to open it for him before his hand reaches the knob.

Jon looks up at him defiantly and through narrowed eyes. If Jonah’s displeased with the way he looks, perhaps he should’ve chosen a more sensible ensemble. But he doesn’t need to await Jonah’s judgement for long. His lips are pursed disapprovingly, and his eyes are narrowed too. It’s almost comical, the way he brings his hand up to stroke his own lips and chin with a long forefinger. He softly  _ tsks _ , and he doesn’t so much shake his head as incline it.

“The shape’s all wrong, of course,” he tells Jon, like it’s not painfully obvious to them both. “I see that something-- well,” he says, interrupting himself with a humourless little chuckle. “ _ Many  _ things are missing.” He moves right up into Jon’s space, and it’s an incredible challenge not to shrink away from his looming form. 

“It all seemed a little unnecessary.” Jon wishes the words came out as more than a mumble. He wishes that he could meet Jonah’s eyes. 

“Oh, on the contrary,” Jonah replies. “As is evident.” And he reaches forward with both hands and runs them down Jon’s ribs. Jon jumps a little but can’t do anything but let Jonah clasp him about his waist. And it all seems almost bearable until he has to gasp when Jonah takes the skirt of the dress in one hand, and lifts it just high enough to slip his other hand underneath.

Jon shuts his eyes tight as Jonah bends down and rests his fingers high on Jon’s calf before he draws them up his thigh. He slips two fingers under the waistband of Jon’s gauzy underthings and Jon can  _ feel  _ his smile. 

“At least you’ve remembered  _ something _ ,” Jonah murmurs low into his ear. When Jonah finally removes his hand from Jon’s skin, he stumbles backwards as if he could escape Jonah’s presumptuous hands. 

“You’re so concerned about the silhouette and you couldn’t even be bothered to match the drawers with the period?” While it is harder to grasp knowledge now, Jon still finds himself uncomfortably intimate with historical women’s, well.  _ Intimates _ . He’s surprised that he’s able to be snide about it even now. There’s some comfort in the reminder that Jonah’s been unable to completely scrub him of himself.  _ For now _ , a dark and defeatist part of his psyche supplies.

“Does that bother you?” Jonah replies, with a smooth smile. Jon reddens. He’s not sure that he likes the implications of the question. Does Jonah mean the inaccuracy itself, or is he asking if Jon has a preference?

“I--I,” he starts.

“You’ll forgive me if I’ve taken a few, ah, liberties,” Jonah says, and it’s a command, not a request. He smiles at his own little double entendre. “In point of fact,” Jonah begins, putting his hand low on Jon’s back and steering him back into the room. “You might consider yourself fortunate.  _ At least you have something to wear at all _ ,” Jonah whispers into his ear. “Now why don’t you try again?” he finishes, his voice transformed and almost genial. The door is closed behind Jon once more. “And if you can’t do it yourself, I’d be more than happy to help,” comes Jonah’s voice, dampened through the door. 

With those final threats lingering in his ears, it suddenly strikes Jon that Jonah probably watched him dress, as he’s about to do again now. The door and the walls of the room can’t stop him from doing so, and as hideous as the thought is, it accompanies the understanding that Jonah didn’t need to… to  _ feel him up  _ to know exactly what aspects of the outfit he’d neglected. He must’ve watched Jon consider, and choose to go without. Jon chokes down his feelings. He knows that he will have to in order to survive here. 

Jon stares at the clothes still waiting for him,  _ his  _ clothes now, and he reflects upon the real idiocy of his smug little comment. He supposes that Jonah has had firsthand knowledge of two centuries of what hides under a lady’s dress. As with everything else that’s happened here so far, Jonah is clearly doing as he pleases with Jon and his body. And he can’t imagine that this will be the extent of it.

He doesn’t want to dwell too long on the other choice that he was given, so he takes off the dress and reaches for the silk stockings that are laid out on the coverlet. But the image jumps unbidden to his mind anyway, of him standing before Jonah, shivering and completely exposed, the centre of his considerable attention in a large, open, echoing room. Whatever Jonah has planned for him now, there’s no way that he’ll suffer it all like that. So he sits on the edge of the bed and rolls the stockings up and over his knees. He looks down and scoffs. They look just as grotesquely out of place on his body as the rest of it.

He buckles the fussy garters around his thighs and they’re just this side of uncomfortable; just tight enough that he knows he’ll be constantly, distantly aware of their presence. But he knows that they won’t be as tight and uncomfortable and forever on his mind as the corset will be.

It’s already tied and tightened in the back, so Jon just has to suck in a breath to push the hooks through its eyes. There’s no shortage of mirrors in this bedroom, of  _ course _ , and he can’t help but look and place his hands where, yes, it's given him the faintest impression of a cinched-in waist. He wonders despondently if the very shape of his body will be altered before all this is over.

After that, he alternately steps into and pulls on the petticoats. He ties them around his waist before slipping on the final undergarment: a camisole to cover the corset that’s covered in lace and ribbon and delicate embroidery. After it’s all on him, he dons the dress again. On top of the fundamental wrongness of the garments, he now feels where they bind and constrict him, keeping him tied in tight. 

He realizes too late that it should have occurred to him to put on his shoes before the corset. It’s tight enough that bending down is a struggle, and he closes his eyes and takes as deep a breath as he is able to try and steel himself. The prospect of padding to Jonah helpless and in stockinged feet is just an added humiliation on top of what has already been imposed upon him. But Jonah saves him from this one, or perhaps he intensifies it, by entering the room without knocking, and walking over to where Jon sits perched stiffly on the edge of the mattress.

“ _ There _ ,” Jon says, the word barbed with anger. “Are you satisfied?” 

“No,” Jonah says simply. Jon shouldn’t be surprised. “Not yet.” Jon refuses to make eye contact as Jonah gets to his knees to help slide Jon’s feet into his shoes. When he rises, he offers Jon a hand as if he’s being gracious, and Jon takes it resentfully. He lets himself be led to the vanity by the window and placed down in front of it.

“We’re not quite done,” Jonah tells him, as he fusses with the makeup on the little table.  _ Right _ , Jon thinks. Might as well complete the look.

Jonah might as well paint him into his perfect picture. As he bends down to gently rub cream over the marks that the worms dug into Jon’s face, he supposes that Jonah’s been doing that for years now. The thought makes his burned fist clench. 

“Relax, Jon, won’t you?” Jonah murmurs. Jon supposes that he has to allow it, if he’s going to distract Jonah while Martin works on stopping him-- stopping all this. He’ll do whatever it takes. 

“That’s very sweet, but fruitless,” Jonah says, in response to the words in Jon’s head. “You haven’t forgotten my eye in the sky, have you?” He inclines his head distractedly towards the window. Of course Jon can’t forget it as it hovers there, ever-watching.

“You promised you wouldn’t touch him,” Jon says bitterly.

“And I’m a man of my word,” Jonah assures him mildly, and Jon jumps when he feels the brush sweep feather-light against his cheek. He’s not so sure that that’s the case, but he submits to Jonah’s gentle application of the powder. 

The real challenge comes when Jonah barely touches his fingertips beneath Jon’s chin to tip his face up towards him. Every time Jonah approaches his eyes he flinches and blinks and struggles to keep them open.

“Keep still,” Jonah mutters with a gentle  _ shh _ , but it doesn’t make the whole thing any easier. “Do you want me to put your eye out?” Jonah asks him, not without humour, when he fails yet again to touch the pencil to Jon’s eyelid.

“Wish you would’ve,” Jon says, under his breath.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Jonah smiles. “It would be a terrible waste.” Jon scoffs but does his best to relax, and Jonah continues his work with a steady, gentle hand. But there’s something gutting about being under such close and careful scrutiny while he’s in Jonah’s hands, and he just can’t sit pliant and docile for long.

“Are you done?” he says, when Jonah finally places the pencil down on the vanity. He wishes it came out a little less petulant, and a little more nonchalant. 

“Why?” Jonah asks blandly, as he picks up a golden tube of lipstick. “Do you have someplace to be?” And he doesn’t let Jon stutter out a non-answer as he slowly paints his lips crimson. For once, there are no mirrors within Jon’s line of sight, so the only impression he gets of the overall effect is what’s reflected in Jonah’s face, and in his eyes.

His mouth is slightly open and his breath is coming faster, and Jon feels a whole new kind of fear when he sees Jonah unconsciously wet his own lips. The terror pulses hot and loud within him when he sees the low smoulder burning behind Jonah’s usual cold gray gaze. And it’s like he can’t help it, like he can’t help but lean down to where he’s holding Jon in place with his fingertips beneath his chin, and he presses his mouth against Jon’s parted, freshly painted lips. 

Jon makes a small sound of surprise as Jonah holds his face so as not to disturb the cream and powder, but pushes his lips against Jon’s so carelessly; so messily. They’re words that Jon would never have associated with Jonah before; concepts he would never have imagined were compatible with Jonah’s deliberate, meticulous nature. 

But Jon can only grip the edges of his seat, white-knuckled, as Jonah presses and rubs his lips against Jon’s, letting out one long, low moan as he makes a mess of Jon and all his hard work. Jon gasps at the sound, and that allows Jonah to slide his tongue between Jon’s slack lips. He tastes Jon from the inside with one long lick, and Jon feels himself start to shake. 

That’s when Jonah takes his bottom lip between his teeth, exerting sufficient pressure to make Jon whimper, and then he gives it a slow, soft suck. When Jonah finally leans away his eyes are closed, and he inhales deeply through his nose. Jon can’t let the long silence linger.

“Y-you’ve,” he starts, but he has to stop and begin again. “You’ve ruined it,” he says, shakily. He can’t imagine that the words he’d stuttered and tripped over served as a particularly effective admonishment.

“Yes,” Jonah replies, with a sigh that sounds satisfied. He presses his thumb into the corner of Jon’s mouth and he slowly runs it around the place he had just bitten and sucked. He drags it down Jon’s chin as he smears around the redness that must now stain him. “But I can fix it.” 

And there’s something sick in Jon, something well and truly broken, because he can’t help but turn a little in his seat to face the vanity and see how he looks now. And before Jonah can lightly grasp his shoulders, before he can turn him back around with a little  _ ah, ah _ , and tell him that he needs to see the look in its perfection, Jon catches a little glimpse of his face.

He sees his own eyes widen but he mostly looks at his mouth. It looks used; plundered.  _ He  _ looks debauched and defiled. Unthinkingly, he raises his hand to his lips and that’s when Jonah stops him. When Jon’s turned back around, Jonah reaches into his jacket for an elegant little handkerchief and he wipes the evidence of his lapse in control from Jon’s lips. 

When Jonah touches up his face and reapplies the lipstick, Jon is assaulted for a moment with the sudden fear that this particular trial will never end: that Jonah will paint him and kiss him, paint him and kiss him until he’s satisfied or they’re enfolded by eternity. But Jonah must be feeling merciful, or have other plans, because he finishes with Jon’s face with brisk efficiency. 

“You’ve been so patient, Jon,” Jonah says. He ignores the way Jon rolls his eyes at the patronizing tone. “So accommodating. But we’re almost through.” He picks up a beautiful little crystal bottle. “Palms up,” he orders, with the easy air of someone very used to being obeyed. 

Jon turns his hands in his lap and Jonah reaches down towards them. He rests his thumb against Jon’s wrist and he surely feels his pulse jump and thud. He pushes back Jon’s sleeve just a touch, and dabs a little perfume there. It’s something floral and feminine, because of course it is.  _ Lavender _ , his access to the infinite helpfully supplies, as if he really cared to know.

But Jonah clearly wants him sweet-smelling elsewhere, and with cool fingers he pushes back the hair that falls against Jon’s neck. He gently tucks an errant strand behind Jon’s ear, and applies a little of the fragrance there too. Jon shivers at his touch. 

“One final thing,” Jonah tells him, when he’s done. “A gift.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Jon says venomously.

“Anything?” Jonah replies, in amused disbelief.

“Nothing you’d willingly give,” Jon amends, and now he holds Jonah’s gaze. Jonah sighs, long-sufferingly.

“Really, Jon. Always so ungrateful.” And he opens a small velvet case to reveal a stunning necklace, an incredible confection of perfect shining gold. It’s inlaid with sparkling rubies, and at its centre lies--

“Clever,” Jon says, in a deadpan tone. “You’re really very clever. Very subtle.”

“I’ve spent far too long being subtle, Jon.” Jonah sighs. “You must forgive me.”

“I can’t imagine I will…” Jon trails off because he sees that there are two matching earrings beside the necklace. When Jonah leans in too close to fasten it about Jon’s throat, he doesn’t draw away fully. He takes one of Jon’s earlobes gently between his forefinger and his thumb, and he rubs the softness there. Jon’s ears aren’t pierced.

“Mm,” says Jonah. And then he finally drops his hand and leans away.

Now that he’s finished this horrible preparation, Jon’s still itching to see what he’s become. It’s a sick thrill that courses through him at the thought of finally seeing all of what’s been done to him, but this time Jonah stops him before he can turn and look at his full form in the mirror. 

Jonah stops him by dropping what _ he _ sees into Jon’s head.

It’s a hard truth that Jon’s come to learn over the years, despite a lifetime of fighting it. As much as he’d always believed that  _ he  _ did, he’s ironically since come to know that no one person has domain over the ultimate truth, and what is real. Man is so fallible; one individual’s perspective on an event will always and in some way differ from everyone else’s. The lens through which one views the world, of course, always colours one’s own personal experience.

So he must not actually look like that-- all elegant and lovely. The image of himself that Jonah’s placed inside him must be suffused with the man's lust and his triumph over shaping Jon to his tastes. He can’t be glowing with an otherworldly, decadent beauty, and the thought that Jonah sees him in such a way is agonizing. 

Jonah releases him from the strangling vision and he stands and moves haltingly over to one of the full-length mirrors in the room. With a small gasp, he looks himself up and down from head to toe. He barely recognizes what he sees.

Even before he destroyed the world, Jon had trouble meeting his own eyes in the mirror. The closer he came to godhood, the more unnerving and otherworldly they shone. But their dark and smoky rims make them seem to blaze an even deeper green now. 

The colour on his cheeks gives the impression that he can’t gaze upon himself without a demure blush, but surely Jonah put that there. And it’s been some time since his skin’s seemed smooth, although the way his face was ruined is still visible upon closer inspection. Apparently it’s impossible to obscure those scars.

When his gaze drops to his lips, it’s difficult not to see the ghost of what Jonah did to him. Streaks of red seem to remain like the scene of a murder. But Jonah fixed that part of him perfectly, at least, and there’s truly no trace of the crime.

Jonah’s gift sits perfectly in the hollow of his throat, and it mostly hides the ragged scar on his neck. It’s framed perfectly by the neckline of the dress, cut just low enough to put his collarbones on display. 

The red dress is tight and binding upon his arms, but not as restrictive as the bodice of the gown. It keeps his posture firm and erect; he can’t help but be held up by it like a puppet on taut strings. The way that the skirt is made shapely by his petticoats brings attention to the narrowness of his waist. The shoes that unbalance him so peek out from underneath.

He almost wishes he could cry. There might be a little power in destroying what Jonah’s worked so hard to create.

“Your hair will grow,” Jonah says as he runs his fingers through it, as if it’s the one blemish that keeps the look from its completion. “We have all the time in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tfw you’ve already written Jonah noncon forced fem dressing Jon in a completely different fic but later you decide to write another fic wherein doing so is necessary to the story. :’(
> 
> Thanks to my Crew as always for like, you know. Coming up with the story and all its details!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon uncovers a little bit of history.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to warn you, there's a bullying narrative and a dead OC on the menu. Be well!

Jon feels consciousness seep slowly back into his being, and he pushes the side of his face into his pillow. It’s so soft and so plush that he makes a tiny noise into it, and his eyes begin to flutter open. And it’s like his head is stuffed with down, too; everything’s soft and confused and he’s not immediately sure of where he is.

But when he opens his eyes and the room starts to crawl into focus, he knows with certainty that he isn’t in his flat, nor the Institute, nor a dream. Jonah has pulled up a chair that’s upholstered with a disorienting brocade, and he’s staring down at Jon like he’s pleased that he’s awake. Jon tries to sit upright and pull himself away to the other side of the bed, but he finds that his body resists the motion.

“Hello, Jon,” Jonah says pleasantly.

“Jonah,” Jon replies, and it comes out raspy and rough. He doesn’t feel right. “What did you do to me?”

Jonah runs his fingers across his own jaw, as if he’s thinking.

“Recently?” he asks. Jon wants to smother him with his pillow. 

“Why do I feel like this?” Jon asks instead. “Why is it so hard to… so hard to access the Eye?”

“Always so full of questions.” Jon scowls at this non-answer. Even if he can’t make Jonah answer him, his old habits do still cling desperately to life.

“ _ Jonah _ \--” Jon starts again. He tries to grasp and pull for the rich texture of the compulsion, but it slips away from him on fraying strings. But the band around his finger pulses and constricts, and he may not need to repeat the question after all.

Jon pulls his hand from under the covers and turns it this way and that to examine it. He finds that he can turn the ring on his finger but cannot slide it up and down. It burns hot against his skin, but doesn’t hurt him. 

“Very good, Jon,” Jonah says. “I can have you neither omniscient nor omnipotent, you understand.” 

“You don’t trust me?” Jon gives him a sardonic smile. Jonah responds with a sigh.

“Oh, Jon. Do you  _ really  _ think that I could have--” Jonah motions carelessly to the space around them “-- all of this, without ever obtaining a little insurance? It does help to be prepared for any and all eventualities.” And he gives Jon his infuriating little thin-lipped smile.

“Smug bastard,” Jon says.

“Yes, yes.” Jonah reaches out and pats Jon’s hand in an act of profound condescension. “Well,” he starts, as if Jon’s little issue has been taken care of. “Why waste the day?” He rises from his chair and smooths down his trousers. 

“Why not, when we have so many of them…” Jon mutters under his breath.

“A charming attitude as always. It’s a wonder you were ever made Head Archivist.” Jonah smiles at his own little joke. “But it’s just as you say: we have a great deal of time in which to work on it.”

“It’s very important to me that you understand how much I hate you,” Jon tells him. 

“You needn’t say anything,” Jonah replies, smiling fondly. Once again, Jon’s scalp itches and his fingers clench with the fire simmering under his skin. It seems he can’t even send his loathing thoughts out towards Jonah, as they would only serve to amuse him. 

“When you’ve made yourself presentable, I shall be just outside,” says Jonah, and he wraps his fingers around Jon’s ankle for a short moment before he goes to exit the room. 

Once he’s rid of Jonah’s physical presence, Jon pushes the covers off of his body. When he saw his options for sleepwear on the previous day, he very nearly opted to slide between the sheets nude. He eventually thought better of it, once he considered his situation, and in hindsight he’s very glad that he did. 

But while he didn’t have to deal with Jonah sitting beside him, unpleasantly aware of his nakedness beneath the sheets, he  _ does  _ now have to contend with the unfortunate little garment that he selected. While it does have the advantage of head-to-toe coverage, the frills and ruffles at his wrists and throat look utterly idiotic upon him. There are enough mirrors around the room to make sure he’s aware of that.

But as he slips out of it and begins the arduous process of dressing to his captor’s taste, he realizes that the mirrors aren’t the only things creating movement in the periphery of his vision. On the walls of the room hang portraits of many different men; young and old, stately and coy. Distinct as they all are as individuals, they are all alike in the compelling, captivating auras they exude. 

Jon knows who they are; Jonah’s allowed him the small mercy of not completely severing his tie with their god. As he recalls their names and gazes upon their faces he remembers their words and their stories. He supposes that he joins them in this room as another one of Jonah’s many prizes; another trophy that he’s taken or won. He sighs as he begins to dress, and he feels certain of the inexplicable movement once again. It seems as if-- yes, Jon thinks as he moves from side to side while he watches them.

Their eyes are moving, tracking him as he shifts about. Of course they are.

Jon tries to turn his back to as many of them as he can while he dresses. He wonders again if he’ll one day become used to, desensitized to this constant surveillance. And he wonders what will happen to his mind when he does.

When he’s finally finished, made up and dressed up in an emerald green gown this time, he takes a deep breath before opening the door to find Jonah patiently waiting for him as he had promised. 

“Come,” Jonah commands, and he sets off towards the staircase that spirals down his tower. His pace is brisk; just slightly too fast for Jon to keep up when he’s so ungainly in his outfit. He’d found immediately that the corset and the heels and the layered petticoats had already caused him to adopt a peculiar gait. His strange new steps have slowed him down, too, and he struggles to catch up to where Jonah’s long legs have taken him. 

As he tries to hurry after Jonah, doing so becomes more and more of a challenge. He feels constricted, and though he struggles to breathe he’s sure it’s not just the corset squeezing him tight. His mind feels compressed too, not expansive as it once was throughout his journey here. 

It’s the ring, they’ve established, that’s tying him down tight. It’s missing Martin, and his fear for him, and that he can’t see him or know how he’s faring out there. And it's the fact that it's been some time since he's been able to indulge his terrible appetite. He grips the balustrade hard and stops on the landing between floors for a moment. His vision starts to swim and his knees buckle beneath him and it all goes black for a moment when he hits the ground. 

He takes a moment to lie there and breathe before pushing himself up to a sitting position. He feels like an idiot, sitting there surrounded by skirts, and he won’t be made to feel like even more of an idiot by taking the hand that Jonah’s extended towards him. 

But an idiot he must be, because he can’t seem to pull himself up without assistance. It seems he must rely on Jonah for this, as he has come to rely on him for so much over the last few years. For guidance, at first. For companionship, for a brief time, in his isolation. For sustenance, and for release. He feels his face go crimson at Jonah’s smile; of course he was listening. 

And of course he’d meant making a record of the fear that he’d consumed. But he feels sick inside all the same.

Jonah gently drops an image into Jon’s mind: a demeaning snapshot wherein he’s carrying Jon down the stairs in his arms. Jon scowls and opts to take his hand instead. Jonah pulls him up easily as if he weighs next to nothing at all, and they descend the stairs again, this time more slowly.

Blessedly, they don't have to travel too far down before they arrive at their intended destination. Jonah pushes open a huge set of double doors and Jon actually gasps. His breath is stolen from him again, this time by the sight of Jonah’s library.

The Institute’s library charmed him, impressed him even, but it was clearly only the tiniest glimpse into the current manifestation of Jonah’s dreams. It seems endless, and probably was; why should a god be subject to the laws of space and time?

Jon steps into the room, leaving Jonah at the doors, and he slowly begins to wander down the hallways of infinite shelving. His power pulses a little bit stronger here; he can feel it in his chest. He knows which books seem to strain and pull at him from where they’re placed, and which are simply works of literature that Jonah once enjoyed.

“Do you like it?” Jonah calls out to him, his voice echoing through the long rows of books and off the high ceiling. Jon’s heels click on the marbled floor as he continues to walk, looking up and around at the massive chandeliers above his head.

“I--” he starts, but he doesn’t finish the thought. It’s all a little overwhelming, until Jonah comes up behind him with a gentle hand on his lower back.

“Would you be so kind as to get something for me?” Jonah asks him, and he whispers the name of the text into his ear. Jon rolls his eyes and static fills his ears and his mind as he is permitted, at least, to know its location. It’s not so far, as it turns out, and the shelf upon which it rests is just above his head.

But when he reaches up to take it, he finds that the dress is so tight around his shoulders and neck and his upper arms that extending them fully is quite impossible. He considers Jonah’s determination to humiliate him completely and in all ways as he casts about for something to stand on. 

But when he pushes the little stepladder up against the shelving, and starts to carefully stand upon it, his skirts sweep some books off of the lower shelves. He grabs Jonah’s book, climbs down, and hands it to him sullenly. Jonah takes it from him and cocks an eyebrow at the books that have fallen to the ground.

“Are you going to leave my library a mess?” he says with amusement, and Jon groans. He drops to his knees to gather them. The corset hinders his ability to bend.

“Am I your wife or your servant?” Jon mutters under his breath, and he wishes he hadn’t.

“Which would you prefer?” Jonah replies smoothly. 

“I’d prefer to be dead, to be honest.” 

“How unfortunate.” And Jonah reaches down to him, not to offer him his hand this time, but to rest his palm against Jon’s cheek. He tilts Jon’s face up towards him, he looks down at him, and he smiles. Jon feels a ring on Jonah’s finger, a matching ring, pressing against his face. 

“Yes, if I am the king of this ruined world,” Jonah sighs, consideringly. “What might that make you?”

As an answer, Jon shoves his hand away. Jonah lets out a quick exhalation of a chuckle, and he makes his way over to one of the library’s high windows. He stops in front of it and crosses his arms, as if to survey his kingdom. Jon glares at his back, his shape a black hole against the foul green glare of the world outside. Outside; outside this awful tower lives all the delicious terror that his traitorous mind and body craves. 

“If I had found someone else,” Jonah says, picking up the stray thread of Jon’s thoughts and weaving it into something ugly. “If I had chosen someone else, and marked  _ them  _ instead, would you truly have preferred that? Would you really rather be out there, weak and powerless, suffering like the rest of them? Eternally watched? You are intimately familiar with the taste of their fear. Can you really say you’d rather be consumed than be the one consuming?”

For all of his many questions, these were the ones that Jon had been trying not to ask himself. He looks down at his hands, and he thinks of all of the people that he’d met on his journey here. He remembers how they’d screamed and begged and cried. He remembers what a mercy it was to end them. And what a pleasure it was, too. 

“You couldn’t have done it without me. That was my gift to you. Without it, you’d be just another source of fear, powering my nightmare.” 

Jon swallows. “I--” he tries.

“I  _ know _ you, Jon,” Jonah whispers viciously, before he has a chance to deny it all. “I know everything about you, everything that you are, everything that you  _ want _ . You’ve only ever wanted to know, and know it all. Knowledge protects you. It protects you from fear.”  _ Knowing didn’t protect me from you _ , Jon wants to tell him, but instead he says,

“And what did  _ you _ want?” He’s starting to see the edge of things, here, in this place of knowing and of power, but he can’t quite grasp its true form. “You… you wanted to…” He pushes past what’s holding him, and it hurts. “You saw yourself in me?” 

Before he responds, Jonah takes a deep breath.

“When I first looked at you, looked  _ into _ you, I saw the child that would become the man. A familiar child; a child alone unless he had as his companion a book, a story, and the facts and figures therein. A child voracious for more, for the safety and security of knowing what might protect him, and keep him from danger.

“And he brought to mind another boy, though it had been a great many years since anyone had given any thought to  _ this _ young man. Very few people had given him any thought at the time, either. Mediocre in all things, he was the sort of youth you’d only know was there when his presence was pointed out to you.

“He was sent away to school, of course, and a good one. At first, he managed to remain undetected, another boy with a forgettable face, left alone to his reading and his watching. But very soon, he was unfortunate enough to attract the attention of an older boy, a bigger boy. A very stupid boy.

“It began simply enough. Whatever crime the young man had committed-- keeping to himself, staying silent, or always, always reading-- apparently needed to be punished. At first, he would find a few centipedes or spiders in his bed or on his pillow. The other boys would laugh at his panic, and at his newfound reluctance to sleep before checking under his sheets every night.

“It all escalated, of course, as you might imagine. The stronger boy would chase him about the grounds, run him into the surrounding woods until darkness fell, and when he could run no more he’d be burned with a match, or carved into with a pocket knife. The older boy made sure that all the others saw the evidence of what was done to him, and in front of them he was mocked and seen and exposed. 

“For one terrible night and one horrible day, he was pushed into the confines of a tiny, pitch-black cupboard and locked in there alone. When he was finally discovered, he slept very little after that. And it took a very long time to recover, physically at least, from the day he fled to the roof. It was a very long fall before he hit the ground.

“While he suffered bitterly and at length at the hands of this strong boy, this stupid boy, one day he was offered some respite from his tormenter. He was called away for his mother’s funeral. 

“It was a relief, for a time. On that first long day he sat by her cold body, dressed in black and sitting vigil, and he was finally left alone. But the longer he sat, the heavier his eyelids grew, and when they finally closed, he felt and knew and  _ saw  _ that hers had opened. 

“He ran to his father to tell them the news, that his mother, this woman that he barely knew, still lived. But upon further examination of the body, cold and silent it remained, and the boy was chastised for what he’d done. He was made to sit beside it overnight, and while he could see that they were closed, he felt her eyes upon him until dawn.

“On the day of the funeral, he slipped away from the mourners. Nobody noted his absence, or at the very least, no one made any attempt to force him to return. He wandered the graveyard alone, reading names on the stones, admiring the beauty of the space. 

“He soon came upon a grave-- an open grave, waiting empty to accept a freshly ended life. The boy stared into its depths, compelled to look within, and he thought that there might have been something lying at its bottom. Not a coffin nor a body, no, but something that looked very much like a book. Before he could look any closer, he heard a sound behind him.

“And when he turned to look, there was the boy, that stupid, older boy, who must have been the son of a family friend. Huge and hulking and dressed all in black, he stepped up to the edge of the grave. 

“It doesn’t matter what he said before he did it; his words are lost to time. But he pushed me into that grave. And when I hit the bottom, I couldn’t move. At first I thought my body had broken, and that was the cause of my immobility. But it felt as though countless hands were grasping, pulling, holding me down, and I--” 

Jonah pauses. 

“ _ Yes? _ ” Jon breathes, starving for what came next.

“And I… am  _ very  _ impressed, Jon,” Jonah says, and he laughs for a little too long. When he finishes, he turns from the window, and Jon recoils at the horrible glow of his eyes. “But you’ve been very naughty,” he says, and he looks up at the ceiling of the library. “And it seems I may have underestimated you.” 

Jon lets out the breath he was holding, shaky and weak as it is. He brings himself to his feet without the aid of anything around him.

“And I might have overestimated you,” he says, disgust in his voice. “You’ve lived for all these years and you’re still just a vain, cowardly little boy who can’t bring himself to accept the inevitable. You’re a sad little control freak who’s--”

But in the time he’s taken to launch his tirade, Jonah’s stalked over to him and closed the gap between them. He pushes Jon up against the bookshelf, and some more volumes fall heavily to the ground. 

“ _ I’m glad to see you’ve regained some strength, and I’m so happy you’ve had your fun _ ,” Jonah whispers, sharp and deadly. “You’ve been very good until now, and I’ve just given you something precious. Please know that I’ll be taking something from you in return.”

Wide-eyed, Jon nods, and he wonders if it was worth it. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jonah takes what he wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating change, tags added. We're really walking the path of darkness now, so please protect yourself accordingly!!

Jon sits alone on the fine settee as his eyes blindly skim the book of poetry that Jonah had asked him to retrieve from the library. He feels a scalding gaze upon him, although he always does. This one is much more molten against his skin.

He tries to keep his eyes on the page in front of him, as if any of it is registering. But he finds it isn’t easy to do so when he feels Jonah’s weight settle down behind him. It becomes harder still when Jonah rests his hands lightly upon Jon’s shoulders. A quick and involuntary breath escapes his lips when Jonah trails his fingers up to the back of his neck, and he starts to undo the delicate little buttons that Jonah had done up for him not so long ago.

Jon feels one, two, three, four of them come undone before Jonah parts the silky fabric with his fingers. He lets Jon sit with the inevitability of what’s to come for a moment. His breath comes like a caress over the fine hairs there and it makes Jon shudder.

Tim had made fun of Jon, once, for the way he’d sit hunched over his laptop when he’d been at it for too long, his body curling smaller and tighter the deeper he got into the horror of his work. Tim had accused him of being a “little archive gremlin,” or at least something to that effect, and he had assured Jon that he was going to develop a hump. Jon knows that he needn’t worry now. The corset that Jonah had tied him into — tighter than he had the day previous, Jon was sure — keeps his posture firm and erect. 

Jonah pushes his warm lips against that place of concern, high up on Jon’s spine.

Jon instinctively finches away, but one of Jonah’s hands comes up around and in front of him. He puts his fingers around Jon’s throat to hold him there. His grip tightens just a little, and when Jon forces himself to exhale and lean back a bit, he loosens his hold. 

With his free hand, Jonah peels back the high collar that had reached up to Jon’s chin. He puts his lips on the side of Jon’s neck now, and he sucks a soft, sweet kiss onto the side of it. Jon brings his fingers to his lips so he won’t gasp again, but he can’t suppress a shiver. 

“What’s the matter?” Jonah murmurs against his skin. 

“I… I’m cold,” Jon whispers, and it is true. Jonah’s tower is drafty and dark, and Jon can only seem to cling to snatches of warmth when he’s sitting in front of the impossible fireplaces scattered about the place, or when he’s resting under the soft down covers on his bed. But even they don’t help so much; the cold seems like it’s coming from inside of him, just like his constant weakness and fatigue. 

And as always, it happens to be the wrong thing to say. Jonah slides his lips up Jon’s neck to his ear, and he gently takes the shell of it between his lips and teeth.

“I’ll warm you up,” Jonah whispers back. 

Five, six, seven —  Jon feels more buttons on the back of his dress come undone. He despises Jonah for forcing him into this position, where he  _ wants  _ Jonah’s horrible clothes on his own body.

“Why cover me up just to undress me...” he mumbles, dropping his hands into his lap. 

“It’s rather like unwrapping a present,” Jonah tells him, and now he parts the dress, exposing Jon’s back. “One moment,” he says, and Jon hears the rustle of fabric behind him. 

“Well, now I’m even colder— _ah_.” Jon feels the warm press of Jonah’s skin high on his back where the corset and the other underthings don’t reach. Jon closes his eyes. Jonah must have unbuttoned his own shirt too.

Up until now, Jonah has touched him and he’s kissed him, but he’s left it at that. Jon knows it was naïve of him to hope that that’s all he would ever do. But he was an idiot to think that Jonah would give him this room to breathe without planning on stealing the air from his lungs later. 

He could try and deceive himself, he supposes, and believe that Jonah will just strip him of the dress he’s put him in and play with him a while, leaving his little marks on Jon’s body, but not inside of it. But the way that Jonah’s breathing quickens as he helps to pull Jon’s arms from the gown, helps him step up and out of his skirts, doesn’t bring him comfort. The urgency with which his fingers pluck at the ribbon that keeps the corset tight unnerves him.

He can take a breath when Jonah frees him from its restrictive hold, but it’s soon cut short when Jonah pushes him down onto the narrow settee. 

“ _ Jonah _ ,” Jon says to him, pleading. 

“Yes, of course you’re right. Not here.” And Jonah gathers him in his arms as he had threatened to do on the stairs, and he lifts him easily. When he places him gently down on the bed, Jon instinctively wraps his bare arms around himself, and draws his legs up under the chemise that Jonah’s left him in. He’s truly shivering now. Jonah kneels on the bed above him.

“Yes, yes. I haven’t forgotten,” Jonah says chidingly. He reaches down and takes Jon’s hands in his own. “Oh, like ice,” he says, with a look of mocking concern. But he rubs Jon’s hands between his own and lifts them to his lips to blow on them. Jon’s guts clench when Jonah pins him to the pillow with his eyes while leaving tiny kisses on the tips of his fingers. 

“I-I think I…” Jon tries desperately. “I’m fine now, really.”

“Please,” Jonah responds, with a creased forehead and a small smile. And then he takes Jon’s hands and slides them up his own bare sides under his open shirt. With his hands on Jon’s wrists, he carefully guides Jon’s cold hands up and down his body. “Nice and warm, mm?”

Jon closes his eyes and turns his head into the pillow in response. It doesn’t stop Jonah from releasing Jon’s wrists and running his own hands up Jon’s narrow arms, rubbing him there. Jon finds he can’t keep his eyes shut. He finds that Jonah can’t keep his eyes off him. 

Jonah’s soft touches and gentle caresses do heat his body up; he can feel the warmth begin to build in his cheeks and his chest and mortifyingly, between his legs. But the longer this goes on, the colder he feels inside. He doesn’t want this. And he doesn’t want it to feel good.

“Just… get on with it.” He tells himself he isn’t begging. 

“With what, Jon?”  _ Is Jonah really going to make him say it? _

“Just… take what you’re going to take.”

“And when I do, are you going to be good for me?” Jonah asks him. “Are you going to be lovely and sweet?”

Jon breathes in through his nose, short and sharp. Maybe if he refuses to rise to Jonah’s obscene bait, he’ll lose interest in the game.

“Lie back and think of the Queen, shall I?” Jon says, trying to make it sound as if he could.

“The King, actually,” Jonah murmurs, and the smile that he gives Jon is  _ evil _ . 

“I’ll do my best not to,” Jon assures him darkly.

“Ah, but I think you might,” Jonah replies.

“How — ” Jon begins, before he tries to clean the doubt that’s dirtying his voice. “You sound very sure of yourself.”

“Neither of us can see the future, Jon, it’s true.” Jon doesn’t have time to recoil before Jonah’s face is suddenly very close to his own. “But I’m going to put my cock inside you,” Jonah tells him. Jon whimpers. “And I’m going to make you come again” — he touches his mouth gently to Jon’s — “and again,”  — he kisses him once more — “ _ and again _ ,” he says softly, against Jon’s parted lips. 

“ _ I know, _ ” Jon has time to whisper, in acceptance and in despair, before Jonah presses him down under his body and drinks in the moan it pushes out of him. 

Jon keeps making sounds like that, little wet hitching gasps, as Jonah pushes their hips together, leisurely and slow. Jonah lets him feel how excited he is to have Jon like this; lets him feel the size and shape and heat of what he’ll soon be made to take inside himself. 

“ _ Oh, _ ” Jonah gasps, as he presses hard against Jon’s thigh. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted you like this.” 

Jon’s body tightens in alarm. “What?”

“Ah. And do you want to?” Jonah asks silkily. 

Jon’s familiar with those words and what they mean when they spill from between Jonah Magnus’ lips. He tries to brace his mind as best he can against the onslaught of thoughts and images. 

But to his surprise, Jonah opts to simply  _ tell _ him.

“I didn’t realize it at first,” Jonah says conversationally, as he leans over to pull a bottle from a drawer by the bed. “I must admit, when you walked through my door, I was at first excited only by your encounter with the Spider. I have to say, Jon” — Jonah reaches down to push his free hand against the outline of Jon’s cock underneath his flimsy dress— “you’re really not my type.”

Jon’s more embarrassed by the gasp that escapes his lips and the way his hips hitch up against Jonah’s palm. It’s not as if he’d ever really been praised for his looks before… all this.

“So I was frankly, ah, blindsided if you will, by my own excitement when I watched those worms burrow their way into you.” Jon now watches as Jonah pours a little slick onto his fingers. “I watched them as they hurt you, and I saw the blood seeping from the wounds they made. I heard your pathetic little whimpers and I could almost taste your fear when you truly believed that they would end your life.” 

With his clean hand, Jonah lifts the hem of Jon’s chemise. He sneaks his slick hand underneath.

“And I found that while I did have one hand on the gas release, I had the other on my cock.” Jonah touches Jon then — he pushes Jon’s underthings aside and he wraps his fingers around him where he finds him hard. Jon throws his head back and he gasps.

“And I really can’t say what it was,” Jonah muses. “Even now. There was just something delicious about it; about you. At first I thought that it was merely my joy at moving one step closer to my ultimate victory, every time I saw you marked.” Jon presses his teeth into his lip to stop the sounds that try to force their way out of him.

“But seeing you tremble and beg when our little hunter cut your throat… I couldn’t help myself, and so soon after the pleasure of seeing the terror in your eyes as you fell and fell. It was incredible.” Jon clutches at the sheets, unable to block out Jonah’s horrible words and the wet, filthy sounds of his hand pulling at Jon’s prick. 

“Watching blades slide out of you, seeing your flesh sizzle and melt… I couldn’t believe how good it felt, and every time was more potent and powerful than the last. And all the while, you were there, scared and hurting and alone. It was intoxicating, in a way. Almost addictive.” Jonah releases Jon’s cock then, and he slides his hand from beneath Jon’s skirt. Jon can barely breathe. 

He watches as Jonah slicks up his other hand, too. There’s a wet spot on the front of his chemise. Both of Jonah’s hands disappear under it now. The skirt gets bunched up around Jon’s thighs.

“You remember Michael’s fingers inside you, slicing you up, don’t you?” Jonah whispers, as he gently rubs Jon’s hole. When he presses inside, it pushes a thin high noise out of Jon. The noise gets drawn out and tortured as Jonah pushes deeper and deeper, and he squeezes Jon’s cock while he does it.

“While I certainly worked myself up watching you head off to give something of yourself to the Flesh, I do admit to a degree of regret at being unable to actually watch it happen.” Jonah rakes his gaze up and down Jon’s body as he says it. “Perhaps… perhaps you can recreate it for me, in a private little show.” Jon chokes on a terrified little moan at the thought— just how much healing power has Jonah allowed him to retain here?

“That’s for later, though,” Jonah says, as he presses a second finger into Jon. “But, yes. I do wonder what it was, exactly. Watching that façade of arrogant superiority falter and break, perhaps? How very sweet you sound when you’re scared?” He fucks Jon slowly with his fingers as he thinks aloud. 

Jonah sighs. “And it probably was for the best that I could only keep watch over your body from my cell, after your bout with the Stranger. Who knows if I would have been able to control myself, were I allowed to come and see you.” 

He lets out a little laugh and Jon thinks that Jonah must be using his powers on him now. It can’t be that Jonah’s working his body with his hands and fingers alone. Jonah has to be slipping into him how good he felt when he watched Jon get torn up and hurt enough to be prepared for Jonah’s use.

And Jonah slips his fingers from Jon’s body now, easy and sweet. He gives Jon’s cock one last squeeze and he looks down at him with a warm, soft, horrifying smile. Jon lets his eyes flutter closed so he doesn’t have to see it. He gasps, open-mouthed, as Jonah spreads more wetness down from the head of his cock with his thumb.

“Pleasure becomes you, Jon,” Jonah says, with sincerity and a sigh. “Almost as much as pain.” 

“ _ Please _ ,” Jon whispers. “Please.” 

“Yes, Jon,” Jonah murmurs. “All right.” He leaves Jon and his heaving chest and pounding heart on the bed while he goes to wipe his hands and strip himself down. When he’s finished, he leans over the bed and hikes Jon’s chemise up around his waist so that he can gently spread his legs and kneel between them. He slicks up his own cock and he looks at Jon and says,

“If you still insist upon breathing, I’d recommend you do it now.” 

Jon tries to, he really does, but the shocking new presence of Jonah inside his body makes him cry out. Jonah’s cock feels so much bigger than his fingers did, so much harder and hotter as he opens up a place for himself deep inside of Jon. 

“You’re virgin-tight for me, Jon,” Jonah hisses, and he seems to take his time to savour the way that Jon’s body holds his cock inside of it. He leans back and guides Jon’s trembling thighs around his waist, and he fucks into him slow and deep.

“H-harder, please,” Jon begs him.

“Hmm?” Jonah says, drawing out the sound like a moan. “You want me to hurt you? You think you don’t deserve this pleasure?” 

Jon’s whole body clenches when he thinks about it. Of course he doesn’t, after all that he’s done. 

“But you’ve done so very well for me, Jon. Building me my kingdom, delivering yourself to me, and destroying my enemies on your way.” He puts one hand back on Jon’s cock to rub it more. “Pain will come later, yes — I want that for you too, of course. But for now, I should think you’re entitled to a reward.”

A reward? Surely all of those things call for punishment, not pleasure. 

“You’ve thought this way before, Jon.” Jonah uses his other hand to pet and stroke Jon’s sides. He plays with Jon’s chest a little and when it makes Jon’s body tighten, Jonah moans. “Of all the times I worked myself to ecstasy watching you, can you guess which was the sweetest?”

Jon doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to hear about it. But Jonah wants him to.   
  
“Do you remember how you felt when you found that poor woman,  _ hunted  _ her, backed her into the proverbial corner and ripped the fear from her mind for your own consumption?” 

Of course he does. Her eyes, captured by his compulsion, often ornament his dreams. 

“Fear, power, pleasure… it’s all one, Jon, and I have given you them all.” Jonah’s cock presses a spot in Jon that makes him scream. “You’ve put on a show of resistance long enough.  _ Let me show you what you’ve been denying yourself _ ,” he whispers. 

“No, n-no...  _ god  _ Jonah, I don’t want this—”

“Just like you didn’t want to grasp control of your fear? Just like you didn’t want the means to punish and destroy what’s hurt you?” 

Jon’s mind feels as stretched and full as his body when Jonah plays with it like this. He wishes it could be empty and cold; wishes Jonah would just allow him to disconnect from what’s being done to him. But the places where Jonah leaves his hands feel blisteringly hot, and the warmth builds in him, steady and inevitable. 

He  _ does _ want to come. He does want the fire that’s inside of him to grow as ravenous as he is. His mouth drops open and his eyes flutter closed and he waits to be consumed. Jonah leans down over him and brushes his fingers against Jon’s cheek. 

“You’re so —” Jonah says. “The way you look, like this. My pretty Archive, lost in pleasure.”

Jon mindlessly turns his face into the palm against his cheek. He slides his lips over Jonah’s fingers when they fall within reach.

“Come for me, Jon,” Jonah whispers. “Show me how good it feels.”

And he does. He comes just as Jonah promised he would, all filled up with his cock. The ecstasy seems to stretch into forever, longer than he would ever have thought possible. Jonah pulls the pleasure from him without ever breaking contact with his eyes.

He drinks in deep desperate breaths as he starts to come down from the high of it, vision going blurry as he thinks that he might faint. Jonah had been twitching his hips ever so slightly, barely pushing inside at all. But he starts to fuck harder into Jon now hat’s he’s gone melted and soft. 

“It—  _ ah _ — it felt so good for me too, Jon,” Jonah says, strained and wanting. “I want to show you, too.” As the synapses in Jon’s brain start to reconnect, he realizes with some urgency what Jonah means. 

“Don’t, Jonah, not inside, please—” He’s suddenly consumed with the certainty that Jonah can’t leave some of himself behind there. Jonah can’t be allowed to mark him from the inside like this.

“Hm? What’s the matter? How much do you think that I’ve changed your body? How much do you think that you’ve been altered to become the monster that I’ve made you?”

“I don’t… I don’t want to  _ know _ —” 

Jonah laughs at that, real honest mirth. “Don’t you?” he whispers cruelly. “That’s  _ all _ we want, Jon. So let’s  _ see _ . It _ is _ my world, under  _ my _ power. Let’s see if I can warp your body further; if I can plant another seed within you so we can grow something else that’s new together.” 

“Jonah,  _ please _ , don’t—” He doesn’t know if Jonah’s serious. He doesn’t know if what he’s saying is even possible. It scares him how much Jonah seems to want it. But Jonah keeps fucking into him, harder and faster, creeping closer to his inevitable climax. 

“Yes, Jon, oh  _ yes _ . You’re my— you’re mine— you’re my delicate little doll—” and he presses himself as far into Jon as he can when he comes. He leans down to suck on Jon’s unresisting lips when he slips out of him. He swallows the defeated little moan Jon makes at the feeling.

Because it’s happened, it’s too late; Jonah’s come sits deep within him, and Jon is not permitted to know what that might mean. And Jonah won’t let him run or hide from it, won’t let him desperately flee to try and get it out of him. 

He just eases himself down behind Jon, and presses his chest up against his back. He reaches around him, down low but above Jon’s softening cock, and he rubs slow soft circles against him there. 

***

Jon had left his mind to wander as far as it was able, but he comes back to himself when Jonah occupies the other seat of the  tête-à-tête in the parlour of his horrible tower. Jon stares straight ahead, rigid and stiff, and he feels Jonah incline his body towards him. But soon he takes a breath, and then his whispered French curls towards Jon like scented smoke.

  
“ _Wine knows how to adorn the most sordid hovel with marvelous luxury, and make more than one fabulous portal appear in the gold of its red mist like a sun setting in a cloudy sky,_ ” Jonah says, almost conversationally. Then he sighs.

“ _ Opium _ ,” he continues, “ _ magnifies that which is limitless, lengthens the unlimited, _ _ makes time deeper, hollows out voluptuousness, and with dark, gloomy pleasures fills the soul beyond its capacity. _ ” Jon lets out a sharp and bitter laugh. Jonah threads his fingers through the fine strands of hair that have fallen loose from how he likes Jon to wear it, and he tugs on them lightly until Jon is forced to meet his gaze. 

“ _ All that _ ,” Jonah tells him, “ _ is not equal to the poison which flows from your eyes, from your green eyes, lakes where my soul trembles and sees its evil side… _ ” Jon feels his face contort into an involuntary sneer. How can he school his thoughts before this man if he’s not even in control of his expressions? Jonah’s face looks rapturous. 

“ _ My dreams come in multitude to slake their thirst in those bitter gulfs _ ,” he continues. Jon knows all about Jonah’s dreams about his eyes. Jonah has forced him to behold them all.

“ _ All that _ ,” Jonah continues, and he leans in to ghost his lips against Jon’s. “ _ Is not equal to the awful wonder of your biting saliva, charged with madness, that plunges my remorseless soul into oblivion and rolls it in a swoon to the shores of death _ .” His last words are a delicate whisper and he licks into Jon’s mouth. Jon thinks of all the ways he’d like to end this man, and Jonah laughs softly against his lips. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem is, of course, "Le Poison" by Charles Baudelaire. This is William Aggeler's lovely 1954 translation.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon has an adventure.

Jon lies on the soft grass and he feels good. 

He never imagined how wonderful it would be, and he did need some cajoling to get down there. He didn’t want to stain his trousers, or invite curious insects to climb upon his person, but he’s very glad he was convinced. The cool breeze feels sweet on his skin, and the sun is pleasantly warm on the side of his face. The other side of his face is pleasantly warm too, where it’s pressed against Martin.

He’s sort of half on the grass, really, and half on top of the one he loves. Martin’s arm is around him, and his arm is draped over Martin, and Jon closes his eyes and he lets himself be held. He listens quietly to Martin’s soft breathing for a while, but the man’s a veritable furnace and soon Jon rolls off of him when he finds that he’s gotten too warm.

Instead he spreads himself out on the grass, feeling a little silly doing it. Martin knows him well enough to pick up on that and laughs at him a little. Jon laughs at himself too, today. But looking right at it now, the intensity of the bright blue sky overwhelms him, and he throws his arm over his eyes to shield them from its glorious shine. Martin reaches down to his other hand and he gives it a gentle squeeze.

“Thank you for this, Jon,” Martin softly says. “But… but you can turn it back the way you like it now.” 

“Mm, what?” Jon’s so warm and drowsy that it’s hard to catch Martin’s meaning.

“Oh you know,” Martin starts playfully. “With the suffering, and, and, the screaming? You know,  _ aah! _ And the big all-seeing eye in the sky?”

“Martin, what?” Jon’s a little more awake now. He doesn’t know what he could possibly mean by that. “I-I don’t--”

“Yeah, see? Like that!” The warmth is leached from the sky as its blue is corrupted into a sick and unnatural green. The air begins to vibrate with an unnamed evil. 

“No, Martin, no, that’s not right.” Jon’s voice turns panicked as he rolls over and puts his hands on Martin’s broad chest. “I want this, I like this-- I want  _ you! _ ” Martin puts his big hands around Jon’s wrists and lifts him easily off of him. 

“Goodbye, Jon,” he says, and his voice is fond and sad. “I’m so happy that we could do this one last time.” Jon can see that Martin’s eyes are wet, but when he reaches up to remove his glasses to wipe away the tears, there’s nothing. There’s nothing behind them. No eyes, just a blank, empty face. Jon covers his own eyes with his hands, because he can’t look at it.

“Jon?” he hears. “Jon, it’s alright. Jon?” The cold wind whirls around him, lifting his hair and dead leaves and tiny brittle bones. “Jon?”

“ _ Jon? _ ” His eyes flutter open and Jonah Magnus is sitting on his bed, gently pushing his sweaty hair off of his forehead. “I’m pleased to see you’ve been resting.” He smiles as if he was privy to Jon’s fresh suffering. He probably was. Jon knows that Jonah has access to his dreams. Jonah finishes with his hair and then he delicately caresses Jon’s face. 

“Jon. I have some, well,  _ business _ to attend to.” Jon laughs bitterly, and it’s a little broken. “Now, you’re clearly too weak to accompany me, so you’ll be staying here.” Several emotions bombard Jon at this, each on a slight delay thanks to his utter, annihilating exhaustion.

On the one hand, it’ll be a blessing to be without Jonah, no matter how long he’ll be away. Oh, he’ll always have an eye or two on Jon, of course. But at least there’d be no possibility of him suddenly physically imposing himself upon Jon’s space as he so loves to do. 

This pure relief is compounded by the fact that Jon will not have to face whomever-- or  _ whatever  _ \-- Jonah is meeting. Though it’s not as if he fears whatever twisted being Jonah must deal with to ensure the smooth running of his hideous empire. Jon merely won’t have to endure the utter humiliation of having what Jonah’s done to him exposed to another.

And that’s the final thing, what actually hurts him about all this. Jonah’s starved his body so; withheld all the nourishing sweet darkness and suffering that should be sustaining him. This reminder that he’s been so ruined that he can barely walk is excruciating, even though the man he’d be walking beside is Jonah. 

“Oh, but I  _ would _ love to show you off,” Jonah says cruelly, responding to Jon’s thoughts. “When you’re feeling a touch better, I’m sure that I could find you a chair.” Jon closes his eyes to this violation of his mind. 

“Don’t worry,” says Jonah, intentionally misunderstanding Jon’s expression. “I won’t be away long.” And with this promise or this threat he presses a soft kiss to Jon’s cheek before he rises and he leaves.

Jon keeps his eyes closed for several moments after Jonah makes his exit. He tries to summon the energy to plan how he’ll use this rare and precious time alone. But his freedoms have been so restricted here, and for so long, that it’s hard to imagine what independence he can carve out for himself now. So he opens his eyes and he turns his head on his pillow, and he sees something that he never would have thought to plan for. 

Jonah had left his door open. Not shut, not locked, but open.

Jon blinks twice, but the doors stay put. His mind is waking up now, even if his body’s struggling. He wishes his first thought was one of freedom, but everything he knows tells him it’s a trap. Jonah is not a careless man, and by Jon’s understanding never has been. He’s always been so sure to lock Jon’s doors with that simple key that he carries with him everywhere.

But if Jonah is trying to trap him, to what end?  _ Why does he do any of the things he does to me _ , Jon wonders. He wonders if Jonah’s trying to bait him into disobedience so that he can subject him to some unthinkable punishment. Or perhaps it just amuses him to play with Jon’s mind like this. It certainly seems as likely an explanation as any.

So is Jon to just lie here, a cowed pet? A broken doll? Is he to see this opportunity and let it pass him by? Surely Jonah could have predicted his entire train of thought. Perhaps he’d even orchestrated it. But no, Jon has always been stubborn, hasn’t he? Even before he started working at the Institute; before Jonah had spent years carefully cultivating his mind. He’d always made questionable decisions. He’d always danced for others like a puppet on a string.

So Jon closes his eyes and he takes a deep breath and he attempts to throw off the heavy covers. They’re heavier than he had realized. When he manages to push them off his body, he immediately feels cold. He shivers in his thin chemise, and he stares at the low, armless chair in the corner with a shawl spread over it. He needs to reserve his strength, he knows. The exertion will warm him up. 

It takes more effort than he’d like to sit himself up in bed. He idly wonders how much fear Jonah can keep from him before he loses himself completely. Jonah wouldn’t allow him to die, surely.  _ Could _ he even die? Would he fall into endless unconsciousness, like he had before he fully embraced his monstrousness? Jonah would most likely keep him here, like this, balanced precariously and gripping onto life with his broken fingernails. 

So he tries to push himself up and forward, and he crumples to the ground. He lies there for a while, and the aftershocks of the impact pulse dully through his bones. But he doesn’t lie there long, because he has no way of knowing just how long Jonah’s  _ business _ will take. So he slowly, painfully extends an arm. And just as slowly, and as much as it hurts, he pulls himself forward.

It’s very slow going. It feels like the door’s moving away from him as he crawls towards it. It occurs to him that this might be all part of the game, that somehow Jonah’s placed this cruel fantasy in his head. But no, as big and wide as the room is, Jon can see that he’s getting closer to the exit and to his possible freedom. 

It’s an arduous, onerous journey. Jon pulls himself by his fingernails and tries not to think about what will happen  _ after _ he reaches the doors. It’s a very tall tower. It’s not entirely ideal that his breath is already coming heavy, and that his heart might burst from his chest. He could take a break to rest, he supposes, but that would destroy precious time. He pulls himself forward and he thinks of freedom. He pulls himself forward and he thinks of blue skies, warm sun, and Martin Blackwood. 

He gets to those doors, and he takes a rest because he has to. He lies face down on the cold floor, and he presses his forehead against it while he tries to breathe. He doesn’t like the sound of the air rattling in his throat, but it’s the only sound in the room to hear. He can’t wait any longer. He has to go on. He looks up.

Jonah Magnus is there.

“Ah! I had just forgotten something that I needed; you understand how it is.” Sure. Yes. Jonah Magnus forgetting something important. Jonah Magnus being unprepared for a meeting. “I thought I would come to look in on you before I left again.” Jon drops his head and his forehead hits the ground hard.

“It really is too soon for any sort of strenuous exercise, don’t you think?” Jonah’s tone is light and conversational. “Here, I’ll help you.” 

Jonah scoops Jon up into his arms like it’s nothing and he carries him back to bed. Jon begins to weep. 

***

Jon sits on the edge of Jonah’s enormous bed, straight-backed and still. He keeps his hands folded in his lap in the way that he knows pleases Jonah, and he remains silent, as is expected of him. It’s not as if he has a great deal to say to Jonah in this moment. While there is certainly something cathartic in railing uselessly against his captor, Jon is simply too drained and starving to bait his amusement or his wrath. He doesn’t turn his head to look at him when he feels Jonah’s terrible approach. But Jonah reaches down to place a gentle finger on his chin. He tilts Jon’s face upwards, and says to him in perfect French:

“ _ I adore you as much as the nocturnal vault, O vase of sadness, most taciturn one _ .” Jon allows himself a small rebellion and turns his face away and out of Jonah’s tender grip. Jonah drops his hand. Instead he leans forward to whisper into Jon’s ear.

“ _ I love you all the more because you flee from me, _ ” he says, and his lips are touching Jon now. His voice drops down an octave.  __ “ _ And because you appear, ornament of my nights, more ironically to multiply the leagues that separate my arms from the blue infinite. _ ” Jon feels caged in by the obscenity of the words, and he leans away from Jonah, up the bed and towards the headboard. Jonah is on him in an instant; his limbs bracketing Jon’s body and his hips pressed up against him.

“ _ I advance to attack _ ,” Jonah says. “ _ And I climb to assault _ .” He takes Jon’s wrists in his hands and pins them above him. Jon turns his head again, and again Jonah slides the verse into his ear like poison.

“ _ Like a swarm of maggots after a cadaver, _ ” Jonah continues, low and cruel. But then he releases one of Jon’s hands to place his palm against Jon’s face, and he turns him to capture his eyes again. He gazes down into the dark and limitless hatred he finds there as he comes to the end. 

“ _ And I cherish, implacable and cruel beast, even that coldness which makes you more beautiful, _ ” he says softly, and he leans down and places a gentle, warm kiss on Jon's cheek.

Jon closes his eyes and he makes a wet and wretched sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This poem is Baudelaire's "Je t'adore à l'égal de la voûte nocturne". It is, again, William Aggeler's delightful 1954 translation.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they wine and dine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a touch of physical violence in this one.

“Wine, Jon.” 

“No, thank you,” Jon says, and he narrows his eyes. He’s weak enough around Jonah as it is; his starvation has affected his mind and his body both. Soon after his arrival at the tower, Jonah took him on a grand tour of all of its many, many rooms. He was particularly smug about his wine cellar, and the incredible array of old vintages that he’d amassed. It may have been tempting to barricade himself down there and deprive Jonah of some of his finest prizes, losing himself and his humiliation for however long the drink would affect him. But right now he’s feeling particularly masochistic. He’ll forgo anaesthetic for this operation.

“ _ Wine _ , Jon,” Jonah repeats, and Jon is fully prepared to throw whatever he has left into resistance when he realizes that Jonah is motioning to his  _ own _ empty glass. Jonah raises a brow. Jon rolls his eyes. 

“Yes, of  _ course _ .” Jon’s sarcasm, as always, seems to have no palpable effect upon Jonah. And why should it? He leans luxuriously back in his chair while Jon rises with effort. Jon will make the long laborious trek from one side of the unnecessarily long table to the other, leaning against it for support as he does, and Jonah will get what he wants. 

Jon spends the journey idly wondering how much suffering he is inclined to undergo over the course of their meal. The glassware on the table shakes and threatens to tip when the table takes a little too much of his weight. He thinks about pouring the wine into Jonah’s lap instead of his glass and he wonders how much suffering Jonah might be inclined to inflict.

Jonah watches him with obvious interest as he walks, a thin finger resting upon the gentle curve of his lips. Jon’s had some practice moving about in the low heels, and navigating the long train of the dress that Jonah had selected for him for their meal. But the time spent has clearly been insufficient, because the thick draping fabric threatens to send him crashing to the ground on more than one occasion. He lets his displeasure show plainly on his face when Jonah lets out a little laugh.

“So good to know that I amuse you,” Jon says upon his eventual arrival, though his tone suggests that the opposite is true.

“Always,” Jonah says with sincerity, and he puts his hand on Jon where his waist is cinched tight. Jon can’t help but suck in a shallow little breath. In a way, it’s almost a comfort that he’s not yet used to this. 

He picks up the bottle and knows the ancient vintage without looking at the label, and he’s amazed that it’s still drinkable. He looks down at Jonah’s immaculate trousers and decides that the wine wouldn’t show up on the deep black of the fabric anyway. He pours the wine where it belongs, into Jonah’s glass, but when he raises the bottle with an insolent flick a few drops land on the pure white table linen.

This time Jonah’s the one to take a quick breath through his nose. Jon flinches at the quiet sound. He braces himself when Jonah rises suddenly from the table, but he does so insufficiently. He’s almost thrown backwards by the force of the crack of Jonah’s hand across his face. Jon brings his own hand to his cheek and he counts to ten before he stops shaking. 

“Why go to all that trouble with my face i-if… if you’re only going to ruin it,” is the only way that he can respond. He imagines the makeup’s been smudged. Underneath it, Jonah’s heavy rings must’ve purpled his skin.

“It’ll heal,” Jonah says curtly, and the words are a dismissal. The walk to the other side of the table seems even longer this time. It gives Jon time to contemplate how Jonah might’ve reacted to more than a few drops of the wine missing the glass. He even has a few moments to consider when he might find out.

They continue the meal in silence, and as Jonah isn’t letting him into his mind, the quiet is oppressive and complete. He wants to know what unseen servant prepares these meals, but Jonah cruelly withholds the information from him. The idea of Jonah rolling up his sleeves and spending all the time he could need in the kitchen preparing this elegant feast props the corner of Jon’s mouth up a little. It makes his hurt cheek throb.

“You could always ask,” Jonah tells him, without looking up from his meal. Jon picks at his plate with his heavy silver fork, not at all hungry, not for this, and he asks something else instead.

“Why do we even eat, if we don’t really need to? This isn’t what sustains us,” Jon finishes darkly. Jonah swirls the wine in his glass before taking a slow sip.

“Why eat? Why drink?” Jonah puts his glass down and he runs his fingers up and down its stem consideringly. He captures Jon’s gaze with his own. “Why redden your lips and soften your skin and decorate your body with whatever pretty things catch my eye?” Jon looks away and he swallows. Of course he knows the answer. “Because it brings me pleasure.”

“I see,” Jon says, and Jonah laughs. Jon thinks that he might soon regret not filling his own glass.

“You haven’t been looking well lately,” Jonah comments casually. 

“Yes, and I wonder why  _ that  _ might be,” Jon replies. He’s beginning to grow a little weary of this dance. Jonah knows, Jon knows, everybody knows. This exchange of words is futile and grating. He wants to go back up to his room and starve in peace, or what passes for peace in the apocalypse.

“It might please you to hear that I have a small treat prepared for you tomorrow.” Somehow, Jonah’s concern for  _ Jon’s  _ pleasure is even more horrifying than what he’d just said about his own. Putting aside the fact that Jon doesn’t  _ deserve _ to feel good, he just can’t, not at this man’s hands. Not here. And of course Jonah won’t allow him to know what might be involved in this little surprise of his.

Jon certainly won’t ask.

***

Jon blinks himself awake after a fitful rest. It’s never clear how long he’s allowed to lie alone in his room, but it never feels sufficient. He always wakes up weaker, hungrier, and painfully aware of the brevity of these periods of respite from the man who owns him. And sometimes Jonah doesn’t even allow him that escape, when he visits Jon in his dreams.

But Jon was free of the man while he slept, and he’s free of him now, though his former presence in the room still lingers. The heavy curtains have been thrown open, allowing the nightmare light of the ever-present Eye to crawl across his covers. And when he weakly turns his head where it rests upon his propped up pillow, he sees that a note was left upon the nightstand. He gathers it up with shaking fingers and he reads the elegantly looping script.

_ Meet me in the gardens _ , the note commands.  _ For a picnic _ .  _ Yours, Jonah _ . Jon lets his head fall hard against the pillows and shuts his eyes tight. He tries to know what Jonah might be planning, but of course he finds that he’s shut out. He can only make an educated guess. 

But maybe Jonah just wants to continue to indulge in the pleasures of a pre-apocalyptic world, and dine al fresco. Jon can’t imagine that the horrors of his twisted kingdom would aid in digestion, but perhaps that’s another positive sign that Jon hasn’t yet become the monster that his captor is. Though it  _ is _ difficult to maintain this sort of positive thinking when he sees the outfit that Jonah’s selected for him, laid out across the bed as it is.

It’s white and light and lacy; something sweet and demure that Jon can don himself. 

He takes his time rising and seeing to his face and his hair, not only because it’s what’s expected of him, but in the hopes that it’ll both delay the inevitable, and mildly inconvenience Jonah. Though the man has, no doubt, accounted for the time that Jon must take to pretty himself for him. 

He sits in front of the vanity and touches up his lips to delay his descent into the gardens, but he can no longer deny his further consideration of Jonah’s plans. He had characterized this event as being organized for  _ Jon’s  _ benefit, though that might just have been another little example of his delightful sense of humour. But if it  _ is  _ all for Jon… he’s not so sure that he wants to consume whatever “treat” that Jonah has prepared. 

Jon lifts his fingers to his lips unthinkingly, but stops himself before he gets his nails between his teeth. A lifelong anxious response, Jon curbs the instinct when he remembers that Jonah... _ discourages  _ that sort of behaviour. His fingernails have grown long, and the varnish is immaculate and must remain that way. He slides on the soft white gloves that rest on the table beside him, which makes it easier. They’re so small and tight that the kidskin restricts him, but he knows that they’re a necessary part of the overall ensemble. 

But there’s a sudden agony in his chest unrelated to his subjugation, and he reaches for the elegant handkerchief that Jonah has so kindly had monogrammed with Jon’s initials. He’s overtaken by a coughing fit for some time, and when it passes he looks down into the delicate hanky. It’s a good thing he took it up when he did, or the white gloves would have been the things stained red. Jon leaves the handkerchief on the table and picks up the cane that Jonah left him.

Because Jonah’s taken to leaving Jon’s doors open and unlocked, and leaving him a walking stick besides, and now he’s left Jon orders to see himself downstairs. It won’t be easy and it will hurt, but Jonah hasn’t taken pains to demonstrate how trapped and cornered Jon is now. After his escape attempt, they both know that Jon won’t try again.

So he shuffles unsteadily towards the door, and he begins the long, slow, difficult descent down the tower’s many stairs.

***

Jonah’s gardens are huge and sprawling, but Jon isn’t made to wander lost in them for long. He’s never had much of an interest in gardening, but of course what he cares to know and what he’s tried to learn have no real bearing on what lives inside his head. And so he recognizes every kind of flower that turns at his approach to lead him on.

Huge dahlia blooms in uncanny colours twist in the light of the Eye to usher him down the stone paths upon which his heels and cane both click. Stargazer lilies lift their heads to look upon him when he steps around the pools and fountains that dot the tower’s grounds. Jon has spent hours looking down upon them from up inside the tower, and he recalls how they form the pupils of the garden’s round and eye-like shapes.

But being played with by even the flora of Jonah’s world increases Jon’s resentment and his pain as the gladioli lead him towards the manicured lawn where Jonah must be reclining. In a hot burst of rage he reaches down to wrench a flower from the ground, and as if to underscore the futility of his outburst, the plant grows back. Jon makes a hurt little sound and he pushes past the canopy that obscures the sprawling lawns to see what awaits him there.

The scene might have been idyllic, if it hadn’t been wrought from the suffering and destruction of Jon and every other human in the world. Jonah lies easily on his side on a spread blanket. There’s a little woven basket that Jon knows contains a few of Jonah’s favourite fruits and cheeses. There’s a crisp and bubbling bottle of champagne beside two crystal flutes. And there’s a terrified, trembling man whom Jon has never seen before. 

“Lovely,” Jonah says to Jon as he stands stone still before him. “Is that for me?” 

Jon drops the flower to the ground and he clenches the fist that held it. The creak of the kidskin seems loud in the silence.

“Jonah,” Jon says hoarsely. “ _ Please _ .”

Because Jonah’s been starving him for who knows how long, keeping him weak and ravenous and wanting. And maybe it was for the best, Jon had found himself thinking, that he stays locked up where he cannot terrorize or horrify. Jonah could have his fun playing with him while he awaits Martin’s eventual return, and the apocalypse could remain that much less nightmarish. 

But if he took what Jonah was offering him now, just a taste, how much strength could he regain? He thinks of how tired he is of the monotony of the room that is his prison, and how he couldn’t crawl out of it before, and could barely walk out of it today. He lacks the power now to resist the relentless grip Jonah has upon him, fruitless as such defiance may be. And why is Jonah offering him this tempting fear now? Maybe he also tires of Jon’s frailty, and misses him fresh and struggling.

“Sit down, Jon,” Jonah says. The Eye calls to him too, inviting. So he does.

There’s not much space on the blanket, and when he occupies some of it Jonah easily pushes up against him. The terrified man looks like he wants to move away, but he’s frozen in Jon’s hungry gaze now. 

“Go on,” Jonah encourages him gently. “Ask.” He does that, too, and when Jonah pops the cork on the champagne nobody jumps. The other two men are too deep under the Eye’s spell already, both lost in the rhythm of intimate knowing when Jonah casually fills the two glasses.

The man speaks of an old world, a lost world, a world in which there were jobs and lives and  _ purpose _ . This man-- his job, his life, his purpose, was to  _ learn _ . He was a professor at a university, and while he was ostensibly paid to teach, his primary concern, what had  _ always  _ been his primary concern, was to amass knowledge. 

Distantly, Jon’s aware that Jonah has drained his glass.

The man continues, his words ordered clearly and concisely as they always are, plated perfectly for Jon’s consumption. He learns about how the man had always been ravenous for knowledge; born with his nose in a book and always, always asking  _ why _ . 

Jon can feel Jonah up against his back now, his breath hot in Jon’s ear.

And it was fine, it was all fine for this man, until one day he noticed something. He was becoming more absent-minded; forgetting simple things like the password to his computer, or where he put his car keys or his phone. This disturbed him to the extreme. He was still young, but he was worried that his greatest fear had come to pass: he was experiencing some kind of mental degeneration.

Jonah was rubbing his hands up and down the tops of Jon’s arms now, pressing into the soft fabric of the dress. It made Jon lean back against Jonah.

But the man had sought medical attention, scanned his brain and denied experiencing any kind of head trauma, and nothing seemed physically amiss. But as he continued to work on his thesis, and as he read and watched and learned more and more, he found he was forgetting more and more of the simple, everyday aspects of his life.

Jonah had run his hands down Jon’s sides, and was now resting them upon his hips. 

So the man had tried to focus on the positive: he was being invited to speak at convention after convention, and was soon becoming the most prominent expert in his field. But as he approached the point of knowing all there was to know about his particular topic of study, he found he had forgotten how to hold a spoon. He had forgotten how to walk.

Jonah’s hands were between Jon’s legs now, pressing and rubbing against him there. Jon could feel him hard against his back.

But a team was hired to care for the man so he could continue new, groundbreaking research in his field. He now knew more than anyone had ever thought possible about his topic of interest. But he had forgotten his mother’s face. He had forgotten his own name. He had lost it all, and he knew that it was impossible to get any of it back.

Jon sighs deeply and with pleasure as the man is reduced to trembling tears. 

“Wonderful, Jon, wonderful,” Jonah says, as he gently lays Jon’s pliant body down across the picnic blanket. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Y-yes,” Jon whispers, leaning into Jonah’s gentle touch upon his face. 

“Especially when the Eye watches,” Jonah whispers, and Jon nods mindlessly.  _ Yes _ . He watches through heavy-lidded eyes as Jonah brings a hand to his own mouth and pulls his black leather glove off with his teeth. He slips two fingers between his lips and makes them dripping wet.

He lifts Jon’s skirts with his still-gloved hand, and slides the other up between Jon’s legs. Jon parts them obediently. The fabric crinkles softly when Jonah pushes under it, and when he pulls aside the delicate underthings that Jonah insists that he wears. Jon finds that he’s moving his hips, pushing down against Jonah’s fingers where they’re stroking and caressing him. Jon puts his fingers to his lips to quiet his soft sounds but Jonah grabs his wrist and moves it, pinning it beside Jon’s head.

“ _ No _ ,” he softly commands, and Jon understands that he’s meant to be heard. 

He’s meant to be heard, and seen, and watched, and Jonah releases his wrist and instead puts his fingers around Jon’s throat. The dark leather of Jonah’s glove creaks when he tightens his grip, and Jon feels even more light-headed than he did when he finished with the man who must still be watching now. 

So nothing muffles his cry when Jonah puts a finger inside him. Nothing hides his face or his whimpers when Jonah fucks him with his finger and holds him down by his neck, Jonah’s breaths coming faster and faster as he watches Jon writhe. Jon’s hands come down to grip Jonah’s shoulders hard, and his moans get higher and more desperate when Jonah puts in a second finger and fucks him like that.

The pressure of the black-gloved hand around his throat, Jonah’s fingers pressing relentlessly against the spot inside of him that decimates his mind, his exposure before the Eye, and the man’s delicious trauma; all these things make him come with his hard cock untouched. His pleasure pulses warmly out of him, dirtying the pretty white things he’s wrapped in. 

Jonah eases gently out of him and releases his throat. His caresses Jon’s face once more as Jon lies there, breathless and sated and overcome.

“That put some colour back in your cheeks,” Jonah says to him, and pats him there once, lightly. “Now. How about dessert?”

When Jon tips his head to the side, he sees Jonah drawing an old tape recorder out of the picnic basket. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jonah loosens the collar.

Jon often finds himself staring out of the high windows of the tower, gazing down upon the wretched fruits of Jonah’s design. It’s like all life has been twisted by fear; not just that of humanity. He stares down at Jonah’s garden, and how deeply wrong it looks to have the grounds of some old and opulent country estate growing in the middle of his broken London. He looks down at its orderly rows and walks, and its fundamental wrongness. He is unnerved by the angles of its branches, and the way that the sickly green light of the ever-present Eye reflects off the leaves makes him shudder. What’s most disconcerting is the way in which the horrible flowers seem to tip up towards the window where he stiffly stands.

No, that’s not right. What disturbs him most is the way the garden captivates him. The way in which it is nearly impossible to tear his gaze from it. But this time he doesn’t have to rip his eyes from the horror of the world himself. This time he’s provided with a distraction.

“ _ Jon _ ,” Jonah whispers against his neck. He’s gently pushed Jon’s long hair back from where it had fallen over his shoulder, and he’s left his lips to linger there. Jon hates that he feels the sickness inside of him recede every time Jonah does this, but he still casts his eyes to the side and tries to lean away. But Jonah doesn’t relent, and he leaves slow warm kisses down the length of Jon’s neck. He places one final kiss against Jon’s exposed shoulder before finally leaning away.

“He’s not coming, you know,” Jonah tells him. Jon shakes his head; the barest of movements. He still won’t meet Jonah’s eyes as he takes Jon gently by the hand. “You’ll have to accept it one day, Jon.” He raises Jon’s hand to his lips. Jon looks at him now, and he can’t look away.

“I wouldn’t be so certain,” Jon replies, but his voice is weak. Jonah raises his eyes to look up at him while he leaves a kiss on the ring that will never come off. 

“You forget.” Now Jonah turns his hand over and places a kiss against his palm, the inside of his wrist. “I know everything.” 

And he lowers Jon’s hand from his lips and leads him to their bed. 

***

Jonah loves Jon best when he’s fresh and soft and open in the morning; when he’s drowsy, and not yet fully awake. He loves it when Jon fights him, yes, but it’s lovely when he’s pliant and sensitive and still open from the night before. 

Jon’s eyes-- those deep, dark, shockingly long-lashed eyes-- will flutter open for him, and he’ll accept Jonah’s kisses. He won’t push him away, and instead he’ll breathe a little sigh into Jonah’s mouth. 

Jonah loves to fuck him slow, then, while he’s bathed in the pale green light of the Eye that streams in through his shadeless windows. 

Jon knows all this because Jonah’s told him.

“ _ You’re so good for me, Jon, _ ” Jonah whispers, into his ear. Jon can only whimper weakly at that; can only close his eyes and let Jonah move his body while his mind floats, sleep-soft. Jonah coaxed him into consciousness with his lips and his fingers and his cock, and while Jon hates to give Jonah what he wants, it’s easy, so  _ easy _ to press his face into the plush pillow and moan. 

Jonah gently disentangles Jon’s fingers from where they’re gripping the sheets, and then he takes Jon’s wrists and slowly raises them above Jon’s head. When he presses them down, Jon’s hips push up. 

He’d already made Jon come, pulsing warm and thick between them, and now he’s chasing his own climax as he presses deep into Jon that much harder, that much faster. 

“ _ No _ ,” Jon moans, as he always does, as Jonah’s sharp breaths come harder and faster too. “No…” 

Jonah laughs. “I’m going to come in you as many times as it takes for you to realize you’re mine, Jon.” And as Jon bites his lip to try and hide the high little sounds he’s making, Jonah releases his wrists. He fucks Jon hard, so close now, and Jon brings his hands down.

They land on Jonah’s shoulders. They rest there a moment, but then they don’t push against him. They start to slide slowly across Jonah’s back, and then Jon’s holding on to him as he’s fucked, his legs wrapping around Jonah’s waist, too. 

“Inside and out, I’ve moulded you perfectly, carved out the-- the perfect space for me--” Jonah says, and then he fills up that space, deep inside of Jon.

Jonah stays buried as deep as he can go, a look of warm elation on his face as he clearly tries to savour the hot grip of Jon’s body for a few more moments. But his words have awoken something in Jon, and he disengages himself where he’s wrapped around Jonah.

“Get off,” he says, and this time he pushes against Jonah’s shoulders. “Get  _ out _ .” 

Jonah sighs deeply as he does, and the moment that he’s freed, Jon turns on his side. Jonah presses himself up against Jon’s back and strokes up and down Jon’s sensitized body, petting him from his tensed shoulder down to his hip. Jon shivers, but he knows better than to pull away.

“Aren’t you satisfied?” Jon mumbles, as his skin prickles electric under Jonah’s fingertips. 

“Aren’t you?” Jonah replies, and Jon gasps when Jonah presses his fingertips into the spaces between Jon’s ribs. “Don’t I make you come every time?”

“Yes, you’re a perfect gentleman.” As if the violation of being made to feel good was some kind of  _ gift _ . In fact, in Jonah’s twisted mind, it probably was.

“Naturally.” Jonah gives Jon’s shoulder a final squeeze and then he sets about cleaning the two of them up. 

The next few moments are disgustingly domestic, in the way that so many of his days and nights seem to be. He finds himself drifting away from Jonah, trying to snatch whatever space he can for himself, even now. He ends up in front of a long mirror.

He doesn’t want to examine his body, not really, but he can’t help but look. He skips over how uncomfortably long his hair has grown, and his eyes slide past all the places where Jonah’s shaven him smooth. He looks past all the scars that Jonah had arranged for him to receive in another world, another life-- and his gaze drops down to his belly.

He slides his hands over it carefully, turning this way and that in the mirror. It’s still flat, of course. It must be. He presses down experimentally, and he’s so absorbed in his exploration of the area that he jumps a little when Jonah appears behind him in the mirror with today’s corset.

Jonah kindly helps him into it. Jon watches as Jonah pulls its cords and alters the shape of his body.

“Tighter.”

“Mm?” asks Jonah.

“Tighter,” Jon whispers again. He sees Jonah’s eyebrows lift in his reflection, and then his lips lift too in their slight and subtle way. Jon pulls in a deep breath and straightens his back and closes his eyes. Jonah pulls the cords on the corset and Jon shrinks a little more.

When Jonah ties the bow and drops his hands, Jon brings his fingers to his front again. Yes, it’s flat. There’s no way that Jonah  _ really  _ could have… that he--

“I have a few things to see to myself, before today’s entertainment.” Jonah takes Jon’s hand and he leans in to press a soft kiss against Jon’s cheek. “Meet me downstairs, please,” he says, before he takes his merciful leave.

Jon grunts a noncommittal response.  _ Wonderful _ . Another one of Jonah’s delightful little surprises. He puts himself together as expected, donning the outfit that’s been laid out for him as usual. As always, he’ll just have to wait and see what Jonah has planned.

***

After his endless descent, Jon stands at the bottom of the stairs and looks up. There’s a painting there; huge and imposing and the first thing one would see upon entering Jonah’s tower. 

It’s of the two of them, of course. Jon’s seated, his hands folded neatly in his lap. He’s draped in a long, elegant, conservative black dress, and he’s wrapped in a gauzy white shawl. His fingers go unconsciously to his ears when he sees the dazzling jewels on the man in the painting. They throb when Jon remembers the day that Jonah put the needle through him.

In the picture, Jonah looms behind him. He has a proprietary hand on Jon’s shoulder, and the satisfaction on his face is almost palpable. Jon searches his own expression for anything recognizable. There’s exhaustion and pain, of course, but is there submission? Is there any hint of hope?

A hand on his shoulder snaps him back to his reality. He gasps quietly when he feels the Jonah outside of the painting touch him. But Jonah moves away, and he takes in the overall impression that Jon makes. He gives a slight bow, and he waits.

Jon affects a stiff, modest curtsey, but he can’t help but roll his eyes. Jonah smiles and looks him up and down again.

“You’re really quite striking,” he says, and he lifts Jon’s hand to place a kiss upon the back of it. It’s almost as if he isn’t wearing gloves; it’s like the heat of the man’s lips bleeds right through.

“And you’re vile,” Jon manages. Jonah gives Jon’s hand a squeeze that grinds his knuckles together.

“Of course, Jon. Shall we?” He offers Jon his elbow. After a moment, Jon takes it.

***

Jon clings to Jonah’s upper arm as they walk through his foul gardens. Descending the stairs took a lot out of him; it had been so very long since Jonah had invited him to indulge in the horror that sustains him. But as they walk towards the giant, twisted arch that creates an exit of sorts from the territory surrounding the panopticon, Jon suspects that Jonah won’t make him wait for his next little meal much longer.

“What is this?” Jon has begun to just ask now; there’s no amusement for him in capitulating to the arbitrary rules of Jonah’s games.

“I thought that you might enjoy… a hunt, of sorts,” Jonah tells him. Jon gazes around the ruined London that surrounds Jonah’s tower. Some lost souls wandering about in Jonah’s hellscape stop to stare at him. He sees the eyes of others widen, as they dart into misshapen buildings to hide. Jon releases Jonah’s arm and barely resists the urge to step behind Jonah to hide what he’s become. 

“Bored with your patron already?” Jon asks uselessly. 

“What an imagination you have.” Jonah puts his hand on the back of Jon’s neck and presses his fingers there. “This gift isn’t a show of disloyalty; no, just the opposite. Today, you are free to take whatever you’d like. Whatever you need.” Jonah raises his arms and spreads them generously. “If you can catch them.”

Jon shuts his eyes and he hears the Watcher whisper to him. Or is it Jonah? Or is it something tiny that’s growing inside of him, something that urges him on because it’ll all feel so good, feel so  _ right _ .

Not because he needs his strength to escape; surely Jonah would cut off his gorging before he became powerful enough to leave. 

“You’re right.” It’s definitely Jonah now, because Jon can feel warm breath on his ear. “Enough of this fruitless clinging, Jon.  _ Clinging  _ to morality, to your thoughts of right and wrong.  _ Clinging  _ to this illusory dream of freedom, to a chance of escape.  _ Clinging  _ to this fanciful notion of your pure and shining knight coming to your rescue.” Jon feels Jonah lean away and he opens his eyes. “If nobody’s coming for you,  _ what’s the point of staying good?” _

“Please, Jonah. Don’t make me.”

“You’d like to be strong, I know you would.” Jon feels his breath coming quicker. “Or would you rather be at my mercy? I’d be quite pleased either way.” 

In the end, none of it seems to matter. The fear calls to him, and it’s like a key, unshackling him from his weakness. For all the ones that know him and run from him, there are ones who can’t tear their gazes from him; ones that can’t stop staring. Devouring their terror is easy enough.

A girl who knows that whatever she eats immediately turns to spiders inside her. A woman who is aware of what exactly lives at the bottom of the deep, black lake behind her cottage. A man who cannot live in darkness without seeing the twisted faces of all who dwell within it. 

Jon consumes everyone of them, and Jonah was right. With each story he feels stronger, more powerful, more elated. When he’s finished his dark work, and is filled up with the horror of those trapped in Jonah’s nightmare realm, he returns to the man who let him off the leash. Jonah wouldn’t let his trained dog go so easily anyway. 

When Jon steps up into his space, Jonah reaches out and grabs Jon’s wrist. He raises Jon’s hand to his lips, and Jon’s chest heaves as Jonah locks his eyes on him. Ever so slowly, he takes the fingertips of the glove between his teeth, and he pulls. When the glove finally slips off, Jonah brings his other hand up to Jon’s and their matching rings touch. Jon only has one question:

“ _ How else do these rings connect us _ ?”

Even as Jonah visibly struggles not to answer, Jon starts to Know. He starts to Know that their connection is more than symbolic, and he sees from his expression that Jonah’s begun to realize the extent of Jon’s new mental freedom. And so Jon makes a choice. 

He drops to his knees.

The look of realization is wiped clean from Jonah’s face and is replaced with something different as Jon unzips Jonah and draws him from his trousers. And of course Jonah’s hard-- of course his sick enjoyment of Jon’s grisly lapse in control extends to  _ this _ . 

Jon holds on to Jonah’s thigh with his still-gloved hand and raises his bare fingers to grip his stiff prick. For all the times that Jonah’s put his mouth on Jon, this is one thing that he hadn’t yet made Jon do.

But he leans forward to put his lips against it, and he gives it one soft suck. It feels silky smooth and burning hot against his tongue, and he looks up to see if he’s managed to keep Jonah’s attention. Jonah’s eyes are wide open and are raptly attending to his every move.

Jon knows what feels sweet and nice, and the way that he sucks and licks Jonah’s cock is so rhythmic that his eyes soon fall shut. And in the moment that they do, Jonah moves. He puts a hand in Jon’s hair, messing up the way that it was elegantly pinned. He pulls Jon’s head back, hard, and with his other hand he pushes Jon’s hands off of him.

Jonah’s breathing so hard now, and he’s looking down at Jon, nodding down at him, and that’s when he takes control of Jon’s mouth. He starts slow, he starts easy, just sliding the tip of his prick past Jon’s red lips. The deeper he goes, the farther he pushes into Jon’s throat, the more he makes Jon choke on it. But he doesn’t let his cock drop from between Jon’s lips.

He keeps pushing in deep until Jon’s lips reach the base of it. He holds him there. Jon feels dampness at the corners of his eyes and he feels the need to struggle. Jonah keeps holding him there. 

“ _ You don’t need to breathe _ ,” Jonah reminds him. 

He doesn’t need to breathe.

Jon’s body relaxes. His throat relaxes. And Jonah draws his cock out of Jon, and then he slams back in hard. 

He goes on like that for some time: fucking Jon’s throat with deep thrusts, holding his head there while he uses Jon like a convenient object. Jon takes it because he can. He can barely see through his wet lashes, but he can hear Jonah panting hard. 

“Oh, Jon,  _ fuck _ ,” he says, and he comes deep in Jon, right down into him. Jonah holds him there for a few moments more, and when he finally releases him Jon is free to drop his head and cough and choke. 

When he raises it again, he sees how he’s being stared at. 

He knows exactly what he looks like without Jonah having to show him. 

He sees his lipstick smeared across Jonah’s cock and knows how his used mouth must look. Jonah reaches down to wipe away the tears he pushed out of him, flicking them away with his thumb. Jon knows how his face must be streaked with black now. He knows his cheeks must be pinker than the rouge made them. Jonah pushes away a little wetness from Jon’s lips and the picture that’s painted is complete.

“A mistake,” Jonah breathes, almost gasping. “I underestimated you once more, it seems. It won’t happen again.” 

Jon nods vacantly. It’s gotten hard to think.

“Next time…” Jonah starts, and he puts his fingers on Jon’s chin. “Next time you’ll have to beg for it.” 

Jon won’t. He knows what he needs to know. And now he’d rather starve than hurt others just because Jonah wills it. He’ll just have to wait for Martin, and wait Jonah out in weakness. 

“And you will,” Jonah tells him. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon makes a choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!PLEASE READ THIS!!!
> 
> There is some fairly graphic and explicit physical violence in this chapter. Please be careful! There is also a short, non-explicit moment of suicidal ideation.

Jon sits on the low stool before the ornate vanity and he stares at the man reflected in the mirror. He might as well be looking through a window to another world; there’s very little of himself that he can recognize there. But no matter how Jonah manipulates the way that he looks, no amount of powder and cream can obscure the deep holes once dug into his flesh, or the dark circles beneath his eyes. 

There’s no way of knowing how long he sits there and stares, and it doesn’t matter. He barely flinches when he hears the gentle  _ click _ of the door being open and shut behind him. He drops his gaze away from his own face and the mirror. He feels warm hands on his shoulders and his back where the dress is cut low.

“Getting ready for bed?” Jonah asks, rhetorically. Jon watches distantly as Jonah caresses his cheek with the backs of his long fingers. “Allow me to help.” Time may be dead and Jon might not physically need sleep, but he’s certainly weak now that Jonah’s been starving him again. And so during what passes for night here, he rests. 

So he  _ would  _ be getting ready, yes, but the empty clawing hunger that relentlessly enervates him makes it challenging to even raise his arms in his tight and constricting gown. Of course Jonah knows this. Of course Jonah has orchestrated this.

“Y-yes, I…” Jon starts, unable to fight it. “Yes,” he finishes tiredly. Jonah’s answering smile suggests that he wasn’t asking for permission. 

And it’s not as if Jon would have been able to remove the dress on his own, just as he had been unable to put it on by himself when they marked what was to be the start of this wretched day. Jon is unbuttoned and untied and Jonah delicately takes his arm to help him up to step out of the dress. He frees Jon from his corset too, and somehow in the thin chemise he’s left in it doesn’t feel any easier to breathe. A shiver runs through him as Jonah glides his fingers over his collarbones while he makes a quiet sound of contentment. 

“I’m glad  _ one _ of us is enjoying themselves.” Jon tries to lace his words with hatred but it mostly hurts to hear the trembling exhaustion in his voice. 

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful?” Jonah lets out a little exhalation of a laugh, and Jon wonders why he even tries. He’ll think of some reasons while he rests in bed tonight, because that is a train of thought that could end in his own undoing. 

Jonah clearly continues to please himself as he brings his hands up to unpin Jon’s hair. It’s so very difficult to maintain a firm grasp on anything here, let alone reality, so it’s impossible to say if the length of his hair is any indicator of how long he’s spent here as Jonah’s plaything. But it falls down around his shoulders, soft and well cared for. Jonah reaches for the beautiful silver hairbrush on the vanity.

“May I?” he asks. Jonah loves these little farces, Jon knows. As if Jon could refuse him anything he asks. To display his acquiescence he inclines his head with an embittered smile. Jonah smiles back.

Jonah runs the brush slowly and almost reverently through Jon’s greying hair. He loathes the way his scalp prickles when the brush slowly drags against him, and when Jonah follows each stroke with his fingers. It pleases Jonah to run the silky strands between his thumb and forefinger, and to gently push it back behind Jon’s ears. Jon closes his eyes while it happens. He knows that when he shuts them, it’s not just to block out their reflection in the mirror, and it feels like another black mark upon his soul.

When he’s finally satisfied, Jonah places the brush back on the table. The tiny click brings Jon back and he opens his eyes, just in time to see Jonah lean down to press his face to the top of Jon’s head. Jon watches him close his eyes and inhale deeply, and he leaves a lingering kiss there. It takes every ounce of whatever control Jon still has over himself to remain still. 

“ _ Goodnight _ ,” Jonah whispers in his ear, and he goes to leave Jon alone. When he hears the door shut he lets himself slump forward. 

He knows that he should go and wash all the colour from his face, but instead he just sits there. One of his hands wanders mindlessly to the back of the brush, where he runs his fingers across the ornate design there over and over again. Then he grabs hold of the handle on one of the drawers and opens and closes it and opens and closes it. Eventually he looks into the drawer, and when its contents finally register, he leaves it open. 

The sickly light of the room catches on an elegant and old-fashioned silver pair of scissors. 

Jon stares at the scissors for a very long while. His hand shakes a little when he reaches into the drawer. He begins to tremble so much that the scissors slide through his fingers and fall back down to the bottom of the drawer. Instinctively he turns towards the door, but as he waits, barely breathing, he doesn’t hear the door handle turn. This time he tries to slow his pounding heart, and he lifts the scissors from the vanity.

He examines them carefully. Even though nobody’s around to watch him, he’s disgusted by his cowardice. His slow and deliberate perusal of the elegant filigree only serves to delay his inevitable decision. He’s having trouble meeting his own eyes in the mirror again.

But he finds it in him to open the scissors up, and to hold them by the blade like a knife. He runs his finger across the edges to test if they’re sharp. They are. He watches the light glint off of them. He takes three long slow breaths. 

He puts the scissors down. He tells himself that Jonah might still be watching.

***

“Please, Jon. You must remember our little, ah,  _ discussion _ about punctuality,” Jonah says, not looking up from his papers. It seems there’s still some degree of engaging,  _ distracting _ management and correspondence to be done, even in a world bent at odd angles to his will. “I didn’t think I’d have to remind you again,” Jonah says casually. He dips his pen in the inkwell he insists upon using, still scratching away at the paperwork before him. “But if you really must--” 

Jonah stops, then, because that’s the moment in which he decides to look up. Whatever’s to come, Jon thinks, might be worth it if he was at least able to make Jonah Magnus shut  _ up _ . But then he’s suddenly not so sure; there’s something in those horrible eyes that turns his guts to ice. 

But Jon holds that terrifying gaze as Jonah pushes his chair back to rise. He stands with a sharp inhalation, and Jon notices the way that his nostrils flare and his jaw clenches. He’s not seen this look on that face before. 

“ _ What. Did. You. Do.”  _ Jonah leans over the table and digs his fingers into its side. Jon swallows.

“What I… what I wanted,” he says, and it’s slight but he manages to inject some steel into his voice. Jonah’s taken too much from him. He’s taken  _ everything  _ from him. Jon can take one thing back. Jonah’s lip curls into a sneer.

“Come.” It’s a command, not a request or a suggestion. “Come  _ here _ .” Jon supposes that there’s nothing for it and he approaches Jonah with as much nerve as he can muster. He strides along the table and up to Jonah in his bare feet. 

It was one of those rare starts to their day-- if one could call it that-- when Jonah allowed him to lie late, absorbed as he was in his work. Normally Jon would be roused from his fitful rest by Jonah’s fingers in his hair, or his lips high on his cheek. Then he’d wrap Jon in something tight and restrictive and elegant and take his hand to lead him down the stairs. But this time Jon didn’t even select a dress that he could slip into on his own. So now he walks towards Jonah bare-shouldered, as his thin chemise flutters about his calves.

When he stands before Jonah and looks up into his eyes this close to him, Jon starts to feel the hot prickle of regret beneath his skin. But what’s done is done. He’ll just have to live with the consequences. 

The first comes quickly. Jonah brings his hand up and roughly grips Jon by the hair, and he gasps in pain. He digs his fingers into Jon’s scalp, because it’s much harder to find purchase now. There are no more long and silky locks to grab to pull his head back. Just the short disorderly spikes that Jon had managed when he cut it all off before coming down.

“ _ Did I give you permission,” _ Jonah hisses. “Did I  _ allow  _ you to--” He interrupts himself this time by throwing Jon to the floor with the hand in his hair. He crouches down to where Jon’s curled in on himself and he wrenches his head back again by what hair he has left. “ _ Answer me _ ,” he demands.

“No,” Jon grits out between his teeth. “No, you didn’t. And I don’t  _ care _ .” 

It feels good to watch Jonah’s eyes blaze with barely-contained rage, when Jon’s so used to them radiating sick fondness or strangling condescension or horrible electric want. And to feel good around Jonah without humiliation and suffering and shame excites Jon too. And so he tries his best to hold on to that pleasure when Jonah throws Jon down again by his hair and grits out,

“ _ Go get one _ .” Jon stumbles forward on his hands and knees before he’s able to painfully draw himself up. Jonah’s thrown him in the direction of a lovely vase filled with a collection of opulent walking sticks. As the strings of Jon’s fate begin to weave a more coherent web, he lingers with his knowledge of the canes before him.

Jonah’s never told him-- he didn’t have to-- but Jon knows that  _ this  _ one is made of ebony and is silver-handled, that this one is walnut and brass, and that this one was once in the possession of a very famous poet with whom Jonah had been intimately acquainted. Jon selects a very simple one; black and with a smooth silver knob. The long slow walk back to Jonah takes an eternity. 

Jon sees that Jonah has removed his coat and has draped it over the back of the chair behind him. He’s carefully rolling up his sleeves when Jon returns to him. He loosens his tie and he silently holds out his hand. Jon gives him the cane. 

Jonah sets about him quickly and quietly. When the stick connects with his body it’s almost silent; there are just Jonah’s little grunts of exertion and Jon’s small sounds of pain. When the heavy silver handle catches him across the cheek, he goes down. It’s hard to think over the hurt and he instinctively folds himself as small as he can. He tries to shield his face with his hands and the cane crashes down over his ribs. When he brings his arms down around his body, he feels the handle crack across his jaw. 

The pain is immense and it threatens to overwhelm him. In the moments between blows when he can pry his mind from his body it comes to him that whatever agony he experiences here is nothing compared to the unending suffering that Jonah has inflicted upon the world. The notion makes the pain a little sweeter, if only just. Mostly he moans as it seeps into the cracks in his mind. 

Jonah’s stopped now, and Jon presses the side of his face into the cool marble floor. He listens to Jonah’s heavy breathing and the slow drip of his blood off the cane and onto the ground. His own breathing is laboured and rotten; it rattles and catches in his lungs and his throat. Jonah sits down heavily.

“Come,” he commands again, but it’s softer this time. 

Jon tries to rise. He can barely push himself up. His hands and wrists refuse to cooperate. He tries again but he can’t support himself on his trembling legs. So he drags himself forward, sliding a little where it’s slick with his blood. He barely manages to make it to Jonah. He grabs onto the leg of his trousers to support himself. Jonah presses the hard tip of the cane against his chest and he falls back, collapsing at his feet.

Jon tries again, but it seems to take all of his remaining strength just to raise himself up on his hands and knees. He hangs his head and tries to uncover some last spark of will within himself. He feels the wet handle of the cane beneath his chin. Jonah presses against him there and Jon’s forced to look him in the eye.

“Clean it,” Jonah tells him. The spark goes out.

Jon’s mouth is already full of the sick taste of his own blood, but when he runs his tongue over the silver handle he tastes the metal there as well. He does his best to lap up whatever wetness he’s stained the cane with, slipping and sliding his tongue up and down and around the ornamental handle. He even runs his lips around the stick itself, trying to rid the wood of whatever hot droplets might have splashed there.

Just to be sure, just to make sure it’s completely clean, Jon opens his mouth to it and lets the end of the cane slide between his lips. He slowly sucks his blood off of it and he hears Jonah’s sharp answering breath. He feels Jonah angle the cane down and push it into him. He lets his mouth go slack as it slides past his teeth. He chokes on it when it’s as far back in him as it can go. 

“ _ Ah _ ,” says Jonah, and he pulls the sparkling silver from between Jon’s lips. Jon lets his body go like a string-cut puppet. He’s less a man and more a twitching heap on the ground now. 

“Oh,  _ Jon _ ,” Jonah says, and he slides out of his chair to land on his knees beside Jon. He gathers Jon up in his arms and he holds him against his chest. Jon feels his shoulders begin to shake uncontrollably. 

“Jon,” Jonah repeats, and he strokes Jon’s head. “Why did you  _ do  _ this to yourself? When I made you so beautiful?”

Jon lets go then, and his body’s wracked with sobs as he’s curled up against Jonah’s chest. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt anymore: he knows that there’s blood on his face and blood on his chemise, but all the places that he’s been broken and bruised are already healed and fresh as he lies whole in Jonah’s hands. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jonah finishes his story.

“Jon,” Jonah says, turning from the high window that overlooks his dark kingdom. Jon’s breath catches at the interruption to their silence. He can never be quite sure what will follow once he hears his name. “Would you read to me? I do so love your reading voice,” he says softly, and then he raises a glass of dark wine to his lips. 

Jon knows that it isn’t a request, no matter how Jonah had phrased it. And he knows exactly what Jonah wants to hear, of course, so he reaches for the slender volume that rests on the table beside their bed. Jonah moves to settle himself into a tall-backed chair, and he makes a small sound of consideration. But Jon turns his head to the side and says quietly,

“I… I have a selection if… if I may.” He might be locked in Jonah’s gilded cage, but he can still beat his wings against the bars, as weak as they may be. He quickly glances upwards and sees that Jonah has raised one perfect eyebrow, and he is smiling.

“What was that?” he says. 

“I want to choose the poem,” Jon says with more force, and he meets Jonah’s eyes. 

“As you wish,” Jonah says indulgently, and he crosses his legs as he leans back in his chair and takes a long drink from his glass. Jon swallows hard and he begins, in the French that he had on one horrible day just  _ known. _

“ _ Y-you, _ ” he starts with a stutter, and then he closes his eyes and tries to gather himself. He opens them after a moment and he begins again. “ _ You who, like the stab of a knife, entered my plaintive heart _ ,” he says, simmering fire in his voice. “ _ You who, strong as a herd of demons, came ardent and adorned to make your bed and your domain of my humiliated mind _ ,” he continues, unable to stop the crack in his voice. But he puts the book down and stands up to stride towards Jonah. He knows the poem, as he knows all poems, by heart.

“ _ Infamous bitch to whom I'm bound like the convict to his chain, _ ” he spits, the words laced and dripping with deadly venom. “ _ Like the stubborn gambler to the game _ ,” he says, and he thinks of a gambling man once in Jonah’s thrall. “ _ Like the drunkard to his wine, _ ” he continues, and he reaches for Jonah’s drink and he drains it. “ _ Like the maggots to the corpse, O thrice-accursèd be thy soul! _ ” He throws the glass against the wall and it shatters. Jonah raises both his eyebrows now, and Jon leans over him and places his hands on the wings of the chair on either side of his head. Jon is breathing heavily as he continues. 

“ _ I begged the swift poniard to gain for me my liberty _ ,” he whispers. He thinks about how he was not allowed to die; never permitted to die. “ _ I asked perfidious poison to give aid to my cowardice _ .  _ Alas! _ ” Jon says, and he grabs Jonah by the lapels of his elegant jacket, wrinkling them beneath his fingers. “ _ Both poison and the knife contemptuously said to me: ‘You do not deserve to be freed from your accursed slavery, Fool! — _"   
But he can’t finish the stanza, because Jonah holds his face between his palms and swallows the rest of the words. Jon sobs against his mouth instead, and he knows Jonah can taste his hot tears as they spill down and onto his red and aching lips.

***

Jon stands alone at the top of the panopticon. He looks up at the Eye, and it looks back. He looks down at the ground. It's a very long way down.

No matter where he looks, he feels dizzy. The overwhelming vertigo threatens to topple him, and he closes his eyes for a moment to let the nausea pass. It doesn’t.

So he forces himself to open up to the Watcher and the height, and when he can see again he takes a deep, long, breath. That too fails to lessen the pounding in his head.

He tries to unclench his hands when he steps towards the edge of the tower’s high roof. He stands there at the brink for a moment, with his bare feet and his bare face and a thin white shift. It flutters in the breeze about his ankles, and Jon realizes as the wind pushes against his body that he’s finally stopped breathing.

He closes his eyes again and he feels the cold gaze of the Eye against his upturned face.

“Jon.”

He turns around slowly; there’s no need to rush. Jonah Magnus can wait to see the look upon his face.

“Yes,” Jon whispers.

“Why did you come here?” Jonah asks. Jon’s lips curl upwards. That’s a funny question for Jonah to ask. He does love to hear himself speak. 

Jon tips his head up; casts his gaze to the sky. It had called to him.

“Is there something that you wish to know?”

“Yes,” Jon says. “I never did hear the rest of your story, Jonah.” Jon turns his back on him to look upon the word that Jonah owns. “How did it end?”

There’s a quiet moment before Jonah sighs and says,

“There’s not much more to tell, Jon. Those hands held me down there for what felt like hours, days. Time stopped; it was as if I were dead. 

“But I hadn’t died, no. And thank God for that, though at the time I hadn’t known which god to thank for it. Because I  _ couldn’t  _ die, not yet. Not before I knew it all, watched it all,  _ experienced  _ it all. Not until I had revenged myself upon the stupid boy who wronged me.

“And it seemed that at long last, I had been gifted with the tools to do so. For you see, the Watcher didn’t  _ just  _ bestow its favour upon me the first time that I tried and failed to bring it into being. The Beholding first touched me then, on the day that I was pushed into that open grave.

“Because when they finally found me -- and it  _ had _ been days -- and pulled my broken body from that hole, something in me had changed. That soon became evident, during my slow convalescence. 

“There  _ was _ a book at the bottom of that grave, and it was my only companion as I healed. And I learned much from the tome; more than what was contained within its uncanny text.

“At first, I feared that I had hit my head, and that my mind was damaged in the fall. But it soon became clear that I wasn’t mistaken. I could… well, ‘hear’ isn’t exactly right, is it? But I could  _ feel _ the thoughts of those around me.

“I was fortunate, in those first few days, that everyone around me suspected that my own thoughts had been addled from the fall as well. When the servant idly mused to herself, thought but  _ did not ask _ if I might need some water, and I answered in the affirmative, she checked my forehead for a fever.

“When the doctor visited and privately reflected on the nature of my personality -- unpleasant, from his perspective -- he was surprised at the answering look upon my face.

“And when my father looked down upon my bed, and was frustrated with my slow rate of recovery, and when he wondered to himself when he could finally be rid of me, and send me away once more… I schooled my expression, then. It was clear that I now had access to knowledge forbidden to everyone but myself.

“And so I was happy to return to school. And I was happy to bring not one book back with me, but two. Because along with that ancient, mouldering tome with an eye on its cover, I brought a slender black volume with blank pages. Those pages would not be blank by the year’s end.

“For I learned much, that year, from the minds of my peers. I learned about their secret pain, their suffering, and their fear. And I learned an interesting thing about fear, too. I learned that it dissipates with the more knowledge that one owns.

“I could no longer be surprised by their plots against me. I could no longer be harmed by their plans. And as their hatred and their fear of me grew, as I paid back all their pain a thousandfold, I learned something else.

“Not every boy in that school came to despise me, with the newfound, secret armor of the mind that I had donned. Many thought it through, and realized that I would be a better ally than an enemy. I learned that one can only learn so much, in solitude. And I learned that nothing could stop me from taking whatever it was that I wanted. Hello, Martin.”

“ _ Elias _ ,” Martin says, his hatred like a sword in a sheath; like bullets in a chamber. Jonah’s back is to Martin, so Jon can see him smile.

“Martin,” Jon whispers, and maybe he shouldn't have. Martin’s gaze slips to meet Jon’s for a moment and he sees the flames flicker. But the conflagration in his eyes rises again when he takes a step forward.

“ _ Ah ah _ ,” Jonah says, and he turns around to face Martin, but not before reaching out to take a hold of Jon and turning him with him. Martin stops his approach. Jonah holds Jon very close to the roof’s edge. Jon feels the wind rise around them. 

“Jon--” Martin starts, desperately, before he is interrupted.

“That will be all, Martin, thank you,” Jonah says. “I don’t believe you’ve an appointment scheduled, and I think you’ll find that I’m very busy with a previous  _ engagement _ .” On the last word, he pulls Jon tight up against him.

“No,” says Martin, clenching his fists and standing his ground. 

“Oh? And what business do you have that’s so important that it cannot wait?” On the last snarled word, Jonah wraps his fingers around Jon’s throat. Jon closes his eyes. Jonah’s grip is so tight that he finds it hard to swallow.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Martin says. “Since you know  _ oh  _ so much.”

There’s a moment of still silence that’s broken by Jonah’s sharp intake of breath, a vestigial human response to surprise. Jon can feel it in Jonah’s chest where it’s pressed against his back, where he cannot feel a heartbeat. Jonah releases Jon from his gasp, and Martin takes a strong step forward.

“You’ve been  _ so _ busy, I know,” Martin says. “ _ So _ distracted, and it’s been hard to concentrate, hasn’t it?” Jon thinks about all that he’s been subjected to, all that’s been done to him. How he was the bait this time, how he was the distraction. How he had managed to fully captivate Jonah, and how in the end, it was worth it.

“I was your blind spot,” Jon whispers. 

“And I destroyed your body.” Martin smiles grimly. “This is your last chance. You won’t have anywhere to go when I destroy this one, too.” 

“Ah, well. It’s a good thing that I find Elias rather comfortable, isn’t it?” Jonah says, straightening the lapels on his suit of clothes. 

“I’m sorry, did you hear what I just said?”

“Yes, Martin,  _ do _ lower your voice.” Jonah’s words remain level and calm. “I don’t plan on letting you harm this body. And, quite frankly, I don’t think that you really do either.”

“Your mind reading skills gotten rusty, have they? You can’t  _ know  _ how badly I want you to die?”

“Oh, I don’t for a moment doubt the depths of your want. But what you might want to know is that I’ve obtained a little… insurance.” He reaches down to grab Jon’s wrist and lift up his hand. Both of their rings sparkle together in the emerald light of the Eye.

“What?” asks Martin.

“‘Til death do us part,” Jonah recites smugly.

“ _ No _ ,” whispers Martin. 

“Yes, Martin, please! It’s the only way.” Jon feels their weighty gazes on him as he begs. 

“Jon…?” Martin’s voice is now quiet and unsure, and it can’t be, not now.

“Martin,” Jon says, looking deep into him. “Martin, it’s the only way. I Know it is.”

“He would  _ never _ destroy you, the foolish boy, precious as you are. Not even if it was the cost of destroying me.” Jonah seems sure, so sure.

“It’s the only way to free the world, Martin, to free  _ everyone _ .” Jon knows his own worth against the world’s. He knows that Martin is strong enough to make that choice. 

“Jon…” Martin says again, and he steps right up to them. Jon trembles where he’s pinned between the two men.

“It’s… it’s the only way to free  _ me _ ,” Jon whispers. 

“And he’ll never do it,” Jonah whispers back, low and cruel. 

Martin brings his hand up slowly to stroke Jon’s face. Jon can _ feel _ Jonah’s sick smile.

“Yes, I knew you’d come around,” Jonah says. “There’s a good--”

But his words are cut off with twin terrible cries. Jon looks down and sees the eldritch, twisted knife in Jonah’s side. He feels it like it’s sliding out of himself when Martin pulls it free.

“ _ No _ ,” Jonah gasps. “You… you love him, you--”

“Shut  _ up _ ,” Martin says, and he drops the knife and grabs Jon as he falls. Martin sinks slowly to his knees and he pulls Jon easily up against him on the ground. Martin’s arms are big and strong, and as they hold him, Jon feels warm for the first time in a very, very long while.

“Thank you, Martin,” he manages to whisper, and it hurts. “Thank you.”

“ _ Jon _ ,” Martin whispers desperately. “Jon, Jon… what did he do to you?” 

Jon smiles. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, and he lifts his hand, the one without the ring, to rest it against Martin’s cheek. He can’t keep it there for long, and he lets his fingers fall. 

“Jon, I’m sorry… I’m sorry that I couldn’t…  _ please _ ,” Martin tries. Jon feels hot tears land upon his face like warm and gentle rain.

“I know, Martin, I know. It’s alright, I--” But Jon’s cut off before he can say anymore. 

Jonah’s strong hand closes around his thin ankle and he looks down upon the drawn face of his captor. His grip is fierce and tight and he looks into Jon’s eyes. When Jon looks back, what he finds there burns him as hot as the knife did. But then he sees life begin to leave those eyes, and Jonah’s grip on him loosens. Jon turns back to Martin and clings to him as he feels the end come for him as well. Martin’s lips and warm and soft against his own. 

He looks up at the sky, and the Eye blinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This final poem is from "Le Vampire," and again it's William Aggeler's translation from _Les Fleurs du mal_.
> 
> Thank you so much for accompanying me on this dark and unpleasant journey. Big shout-outs to Chuck Baudelaire himself for my horrible misuse of his poetry, and to the countless individuals who have said “I do not like forced fem but I'm reading this anyway.” Congratulations or I’m sorry that happened to you.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, commenting, commenting again, and giving kudos. I appreciate it more than I can say.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're familiar with my other attempts at playing around with the world of the final season, you may be able to guess the sort of direction in which this is heading.
> 
> I will say this: the rating is going to change, and keep an eye on those tags.


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